<p>I borrowed the book Generation Debt from the library over the weekend. It’s a good read for parents and students currently looking at colleges and wondering if the borrowing to pay for some of the selective schools is worthwhile.</p>
<p>From the examples in the book, one would certainly conclude that the answer is a resounding “NO.”</p>
<p>I found the book self-contradictory on several points. The author believes college is a public good, so everyone should pay for college for all who care to go…but she agrees that we don’t need that many college graduates so we need to cut back on the numbers…</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there is a real problem with debt for young Americans, college educated or not, and this is probably a frightening, and useful, time to review the book. Some of my thoughts:</p>
<p>Kamenetz doesn’t seem to really explore whether graduates in every major are foolishly overloaded with debt. I suspect the problem is much worse for liberal arts majors than her average numbers would suggest, and not so severe for the engineering/science crowd.</p>
<p>Kamenetz is mad (she’s 25) that we baby-boomers are sucking more than our fair share of wealth and “good jobs” out of the economy…in effect stealing the wealth that should be accruing to younger workers (more or less whether they have useful job skills or not).</p>
<p>She is completely ignorant of how the economy works. It’s really amazing that someone could come out of Yale with no understanding at all of macro-economics.</p>
<p>Kamenetz seems to think we’ll have to do away with programs such as social security, medicaid/medicare because they are too costly and they provide an immoral wealth transfer from the young to the old. At the very least we will need to freeze benefit increases. Of course she may be right on this!</p>
<p>Has anyone else read this book recently? It is a chilling read as one decides between selective colleges without aid and less expensive state colleges.</p>
<p>“baby-boomers sucking more than our fair share of wealth and ‘good jobs’ out of the economy” </p>
<p>What? doesn’t she realize that baby-boomers are being paid for their knowledge AND experience – something that she, at age 25, doesn’t have? What does she suggest, salary freezes once a person hits, say, 35?</p>
<p>Jlauer95 ~ The book is odd; Kamenetz does not really understand that people get paid based on the rarity and value of their skills, not just on their sheepskins. She is a serious young lefty, and it never occurs to her that individuals are, and should be, responsible for thier foolish mistakes. Much of her work seems motivated by an unshakeable (and unstated) assumption that if individuals have bad outcomes, the “government” should step in and correct the matter.</p>
<p>I don’t recall the salary freezes after 35 idea (but she might like it). I do know she was hoping that baby boomers would not “linger” in their high-wage jobs past 65…those jobs need to be freed up for the young!</p>
<p>“she was hoping that baby boomers would not ‘linger’ in their high-wage jobs past 65…”</p>
<p>How funny… on one hand, she wants to get rid of SSN and medicare but she doesn’t want older people to work so that they can support themselves (she is also forgetting that older workers are still paying INTO SSN and medicare). she probably would prefer that people “not linger” in “living” either. She probably would like to give each person a shovel at 65 and tell them where to dig their own grave.</p>
<p>Didn’t I read somewhere that her grandparents completely paid for her Yale education? So she really never had to lift a finger to help pay. No wonder she doesn’t understand economics.</p>
<p>"Didn’t I read somewhere that her grandparents completely paid for her Yale education? "</p>
<p>Were her grandparents gracious enough to stop earning any money once they hit 65? Or did they need to keep earning past that age in order to fund her Yale education?</p>
<p>Agreed! No wonder she doesn’t understand basic economics.</p>
<p>She thinks that the economy is a zero sum game – for one person to win, another must lose.</p>
<p>One of the other points is that she goes crazy over the rising debt of recent graduates. But when she observes that Yale cost her family $33K per year eight years ago, and is $50K per year now, it never occurs to her that maybe there is a problem with the cost of college…no it’s all those evil capitalist bankers, and the baby-boomers.</p>
<p>As we are all now all-too-well aware, there are mothers with two kids, going to college full-time, and working as exotic dancers in their off hours in order to get by. And I’m supposed to worry about the debt she rang up from Yale? Give me a break.</p>
<p>There are big problems with paying for college these days. As much as it may pain some, I don’t include those of folks stretching to pay for Yale among 'em.</p>
<p>I have some choice ad hominem words reserved for ms. yalie kamenetz…but I think I’ll keep them to myself.</p>
<p>I heard her on the radio about a month or so ago
irritatted me enough to send an email
mainly about her whining that the current generation ( mine) has f’ked everything up so much that her generation can’t buy as much as her parents did</p>
<p>My generation has a lower standard of living than our parents ( came of age in the 70s)
when we graduated high school, you could still expect to have a good life as a blue collar worker. Neither my husband or I attended college- and we do own our own house, but we have seen jobs sent overseas with the expansion of the global economy, and wages flattened. We earn the same now- in dollars that we did 20 years ago, despite increase in cost of living.
Our parents had the luxury of working in same company for 30 years, that doesn’t happen anymore.
But still we were able to send our daughter to college, many schools meet 100% of EFC. She did have to take small subsidized loans, but we feel it is an appropriate tradeoff for a college degree.
If she hadn’t attended the private college, she would have attended an instate college, which is very reasonable in cost. There are many alternatives for students who feel they can’t afford college-other students attend a community college for two years and transfer- if it is a goal, there isn’t any reason why they can’t get a diploma.
Im not going to speak to Social security, because it does look like it is falling apart after paying into it for 30 years, but as far as standards of living, my standard of living as a tail end baby boomer, is considerably below my parents, even taking into account improvements in technology.
We don’t take vacations, we can’t afford to put much away in savings and we are living in our starter house, because we can’t afford to move.
Perhaps if we had attended college 30 years ago, we would have had a “better” life, but then, that was reserved for a small portion of society- that isn’t the case anymore.
personally as part of the global economy I am willing to see lowered standard of living in US- but if the really high end keeps getting higher- I forecast a revolution- and it may be bloody</p>
<p>One of the most obvious flaws in the story of the book is that half of college kids attend community colleges, either because their grades/scores send them there, or as a means of reducing the cost of the four-year college education. Yet the college debt problem is the core of the book. Big loans are not needed for commmunity college, and in the places I have lived the education afforded in the cc is excellent.</p>
<p>Basically, I have no brief for nationalizing the loans and debt of individuals who whine that they have reduced standards of living because they made bad decisions about school loans and credit card debt.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4 ~ There may be a revolution coming…I’ve often thought so myself. Or it could be a “transition” like in Russsia where the pensions are devalued to 10% of their nominal value, and 80% of the government workers are left unemployed, but without large-scale violence…</p>