Mayhem, I agree with most of what you wrote. I googled her name and the NYT article appeared. Seeing the picture of an overweight, middle-aged white woman with a cat surfing the net in a futile attempt to stay fed is...well, sad. Quite sad. But it's true she bought a bill of goods when she shouldn't have known better. She doesn't exactly look like the MBA type and $92,000 for an IONA degree is a joke. While she was making $52,000 per year she should have been saving money, and while in her 4th or 5th or maybe....10th week of Unemployment, she should've taken a lower paying position. One can't claim nobody's hiring; there are ads on craigslist and elsewhere!!! Basically she made some terrible choices, and others are making these choices as well. At the heart of our society is the FALSEHOOD that happiness and success comes from CONSUMPTION. I do well enough and I *hate* buying things (ask my g/f ) because I know capital is to SAVE, INVEST and maybe create jobs with (currently I enjoy being a one-man operation!). Americans are a sad bunch because they don't acknowledge & practice two principles: #1: Cash flow is king. ($$$ going out; $$$ going in) #2: 90% of your income BEYOND your normal living expenses should be saved and invested. I hope every American young enough to benefit from this advice heeds it. Thanks for the interesting post. --The Chicago CTA
Ah yes. Vacation to Mexico and Caribbean, yet has a student loan of $92,000 with an unfinished MBA. Yup, that is the person I want to hire to run my business.
Didn't financial field have double digit unemployment numbers while fields like engineering and science related saw something like 2-3%? I remember looking through the BLS data a year ago when as usual this site blankets everyone in college as being doomed. The labor market is not that bad; it just depends what field your in and whether your a piker or not.
Guess what. Whoever believe a "a jack of all trade" and "Master of none" degree is the best BS degree has only themselves to blame.
Amazing because a month ago Yahoo also had highest earnings and in demand degrees and they were all engineering. Which way is the wind blowing today.
lol, most college was a scam at 1/2 the price. At todays rapeage, its highway robbery. tell them to go to hell.
Note that she still had a cell phone and a car lease, even as she was losing her home. Tells you quite a bit about her priorities for those 99 weeks. And why would she voluntarily give up her food stamps?
Here is a plan: Why don't we put these people to work? Plenty of infrastructure needs to be painted. Plenty of cities have litter that needs to be picked up, flower gardens that need to be weeded, gum that needs to be scraped off sidewalks, etc. Lets for big work crews, kind of in the spirit of a chain gang, and get these people moving again! They get minimum wage and three squares a day. We can house them in big dorms or tent cities, with armed guards to prevent any type of unruly behavior.
"American college education industry is exactly like the housing industry. They both were pumped up by easy access of bank loans, therefore overpriced and a big bubble. Borrowers are unable to payback the loans." Very well put. The college education racket/myth has trapped many people. Go to any state school and you see that remedial education is often required for the bulk of the freshman class. People who are too dumb to learn their high school lessons have no business in university, period!!