

The young and the jobless - cwan
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/01_0

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gamble
The payoff for working while in school is now quite low. When my father was in
university during the early seventies, he could pay for his tuition, texts,
and car for the whole year with one summer job. The kind of job you can get
today wouldn't cover a fraction of that even if you were working year-round.

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olegk
Working while in school is the best thing I've done for my career. Right out
of college I had 5 years of experience, which is extremely important for
employers. So after I graduated I got jobs that my classmates could only dream
of.

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potatolicious
Ditto here - anyone who is in college and _not_ going for internships (or
other jobs) in their relevant field is IMHO losing out big time.

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lmkg
In lieu of a thesis, my college offered what was basically a year-long small-
group internship with a corporate sponsor for several technical majors
(including math!). I would highly recommend them to anyone, even people
continuing into pure academia. My college takes this program more seriously
than most, to the point that CS and Engineering majors don't even have the
option of a traditional thesis, but I've heard that they're available in some
form at a lot of universities.

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joezydeco
Follow the link and look at the participation rate in the 16-19 (pre-college)
demographic. Headed to nothing.

Of course one can see that just by walking into any fast food restaurant,
coffee shop, or supermarket in the USA. All the jobs are being held by adults
who want the work, as low-paying as it is, and the kids could care less. That
work is beneath them. They'd rather stay home on Facebook playing Farmville.

I'd like to see more analysis there. If these kids have no work ethic _now_ ,
what happens in 20-30 years?

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mmt
I'd suggest looking ath the labels of the axes on the graphs. They're zoomed
into the middle, so the bottom is as far from "nothing" as the top is from the
bottom.

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joezydeco
Run a regression on that data and tell me where the bottom is. One can say "we
don't know"...but it sure as hell isn't slowing down anytime soon.

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mmt
I meant the bottom of the graph.

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idleworx
you know, in other countries college is free or state sponsored. why not try
there. the us education system is big business, and you don't even learn that
much anyway.

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olefoo
That really depends on the program. It is possible to get a top-quality
education at a US university, but you have to work at it just like you would
anywhere else.

