Monday, July 14, 2008

25 Snow Whites?

Check out this post on Rowan Manahan's blog regarding graduates with unrealistic expectations.

Prepare to cringe.

2 comments:

DarkoV said...

I know what I'm about to write constitutes self-heaping, but I'll trudge on obliviously.

As the price of a college education rises in disproportion to most other family-related expenses (I'll leave the lunacy of current gas pricing out of this screed), the implicit value of that education rises as well. Is today's college diploma worth one of ten year's ago? Doubtful, but the cost suggests otherwise.

So, while I also have to deal with (and disagree with) recent college grads' ideas of justified starting salaries and expectations, I can empathize with their faulty thinking on the matter. They and their parents may be stuck with a huge nut they have to chip away with after four years of allegedly worthwhile learning. They expect to receive renumeration in proportion to their financial burden. While the over-praising thing that Mr. Rowan Manahan writes about in your link should be taken into consideration, I believe it whitewashes the current college experience. At least in the States, one thing that the college experience does guarantee is a serious sized financial burden on a student and his/her family. A burden that is significantly higher than one Baby Boomers had to deal with when they graduated.

I wonder if the whole Industrial Education Complex will (hopefully) go through the same shakeup as the over-valued housing industry and...
1) Stabilize college expenses.
2) Weed out the "colleges" that have that word appended to their name when the word "joke" would be more appropriate.
3) Shake out kids entering or in college that would be better served and would serve our needs better if they'd pursued the technical school path.

Michael Wade said...

Darkov,

Very good points. The cost of education probably does raise unrealistic expectations. Today's situation is a far cry from the Thirties and Forties when very few people graduated from college and yet there is the lingering view that the degree is a magic key.