Thursday, November 15, 2012

Four Years of College, and What Do You Get? A Crappy Job and a Load of Debt

A great song by Ben Grosscup about what happens when you go to college, graduate, and then wind up indebted with a terrible job.

What do you think about this song? Does it resonate? Why or why not?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It reminds me of why people hated JD Painter. Enough with the music.

You just asked us for money. This is not encouraging me to open my wallet.

Anonymous said...

@6:36PM

You might be right.

The Woodstock generation turned out to be historically ridiculous and pathetic, and this is probably the final word on the student lending human tragedy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5hrcwU7Dk

All we can do is to warn our young.



Anonymous said...

I used to enjoy this blog but I feel like she isn't even trying anymore. what is this crap?

Anonymous said...

Cryn is one of only a few people who I can count on one hand who is fighting this battle. I think it is a lonely and tiring one. In her defense, I don't see a whole lot of other people, besides Robert Applebaum, who is dedicated to the cause enough to go straight to Washington and confront those who have bestowed this misfortune upon all of us. One day, if change ever happens, we're going to owe our freedom to people like Cryn, not ourselves.

It takes some serious gonads to stick yourself out there. I've seen the nasty comments from people who are ignorant to the student lending crisis and I'm sure she gets her fair share of hate mail. She's really sticking her head out there - she's taking a serious risk for all of us and rather than making rude comments about a post she makes, I think we should be offering our support and help, unless we're willing to go out there and do what she's doing for us.

Cryn is one of the few people in this world who cares about the well-being of perfect strangers. I think we could all learn something from her.

Candace said...

Hi Cryn,

Great topic, concise and to the point, and Ben Grosscup's song does ring true!

There's an intriguing trend I've noticed among recent US college grads and students- emigration from the States, lots and lots of it. Even for people yet to enter college. And our corrupted, outrageously expensive, punishing student loan system has everything to do with it.

I didn't even know about it, until I learned that my best friend from high school now lives in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is conducting all his business in Dutch and German, and has no plans to return to the United States, if anything his family may soon join him in Europe! Note that he majored in a STEM field, electrical engineering, so it's not a matter of "choosing a useful major", rather all the horrendous results of outsourcing and costs in the US made it an un-feasible proposition for him to stay. It wasn't easy to emigrate but he persisted and has thrived.

After hearing his situation I began checking in on this, and it's becoming much more common, the number of people from my graduating class leaving the States is now approaching the hundreds! If you can go to school overseas you'll save all the ridiculous student loan costs from the USA, not to mention avoiding the rank corruption of Sallie Mae and its top execs like Al Lord or John Remondi. Unbelievable the indentured servitude they're pushing on our nation's graduates. Even if you go to school in the States, people tell me it's a lot easier to raise a family and start a career overseas these days. They seem to have much more sensibly run economies, not so dominated by the financial businesses, health insurers and other over-chargers of the US economy. There's more a focus on real goods and services and innovation, health care is affordable and well-managed, it's easier to marry and divorce if you have to without financial ruin, schools are cheaper and better quality, day care is cheap, you got lots of vacation every year which you can use to start your own innovations and enterprising efforts if you want, they help you to retrain if need be to find other jobs and so on.

Where are people going? All over, but mostly to Netherlands like my old friend, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Denmark, a few even to Italy, Portugal, Ireland (another friend of mine there speaks very good Irish) and a few other countries in Europe that have pockets of strong economies. Outside of Europe, Korea is quite popular, as is China, Japan but also places like Indonesia and Thailand that also have opportunities for qualified Americans. In South America, Chile is becoming very popular, as is Brazil, Panama, Uruguay, Argentina and even portions of Ecuador.

People seem to be especially interested in mastering German, which really seems to be becoming the global language of technology, manufacturing, high-level education, the arts and successful businesses. That and Chinese I guess, though I suspect German's a lot easier to learn! (Doesn't hurt to know some French, Portuguese or Spanish if you can pick it up.) But learning a foreign language or two, especially German really seems to be a great investment these days. Emigration seems to be the solution for the increasingly extortionate education system the US is adopting.

Unknown said...

http://earnperform.blogspot.in/