I saw this picture on HuffPo and I thought it was emblematic of another problem.
What was the area of study? Engineering? English? Did you go to college to become educated, or to become trained? Going to college and studying in a soft area, like sociology or women’s studies, does not prepare you for many jobs in the real world. You should have studied Marx and about the relationship between capital and labor. It, apart from your body, is the only thing you have to sell.
I saw this on Slashdot yesterday:
I work as a senior software engineer, and a fair amount of my time is spent interviewing new developers. I have seen a growing trend of what I would call ‘TV reality’ college graduates — kids who graduated school in the last few years and seem to have a view of the workplace that is very much fashioned by TV programs, where 22-year-olds lead billion-dollar corporate mergers in Paris and jet around the world. Several years ago I worked at a company that did customization for the software they sold. It was not full-on consultant work, but some aspects of it were ‘consulting light,’ and did involve travel, some overseas. Almost every college graduate I interviewed fully expected to be sent overseas on their first assignment. They were very disappointed when told they were most likely to end up in places like Decater, IL and Cedar Rapids, IA, as only the most senior people fly overseas, because of the cost.
So, you managed to get a degree and racked up a $90,000 debt and now you expect someone to just give you a job? You ran up $27,500 in debt each year? How do you do that?