I had a really interesting conversation with a Boomer over dinner tonight. I was talking about how when the Boomers were growing up, jobs just seemed to fall in their lap and it was the land of plenty and blah blah. Then I went on to say how tuition has become really expensive for Echo Boomers and how things don't seem as easy as when the Boomers were growing up.
And yet at the same time, Boomers had to go through a recession and those years where the only colours that seemed to exist were brown, yellow, green and orange. They had to survive Disco, the Cold War/Iron Curtain fiasco and some major social conflicts.
Echoes grew up with the Internet and cell phones, tv's with 300 channels and MSN. All these great things that I'm sure the Boomers couldn't even dream of and yet, I keep hearing these stories about how great things were, and how much simpler life was, how much slower things were. And I can't help but think when I listen to my parents stories about growing up and having to make your own fun, that I would have loved to grow up in the 50s and 60s. As much as I love what I have access to today, I think I would be more relaxed growing up back then. It's too bad people can't have the best of both worlds.
1 comment:
There are a lot of problems with college tuition, but first and foremost is the heightened demand for higher education, buoyed by hiring practices that unnecessarily rely on college degrees for jobs that never needed, and do not need, such education. A 2-year associate's degree to operate a cash register? A 4-year bachelor's degree to be a secretary?
Another problem that artificially bolsters the supply of students is the sudden prevalence of student loans. This debt-based approach has in recent decades unleashed a torrent of college students beyond the healthy but far slower growth in capacity for such students.
Let us also not forget the increasing interest of foreign students wanting to study in the U.S., gender equality that has in the short span of half a century managed to have women outnumber men in higher education, and the migration of our economies from manufacturing to services. Each of these factors plays a role in overburdening a frail educational system that has simply not kept up with demand.
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