Yesterday Slate called out the New York Times for bogus trend stories (Circle lenses are all the rage! But they’re potentially dangerous!). Throw this one in the same heap. It’s about a 24 year-old named Scott Nicholson who graduated from Colgate College University in 2008 and hasn’t been able to find a job, despite sending 4-5 applications a week to corporate job openings*. Nevermind that he’s turned down a full-time job offer for a $40,000 a year position at a company he liked, or that he has a college degree with no debt (his grandfather paid for all his college tuition), and that he gave up on joining the Marines when faced with a minor obstacle, the Times thinks this is a story of how the “American Dream Is Elusive for [a] New Generation.”
The story compares Scott Nicholson’s plight with those of his father and grandfather. The grandfather graduated from high school before WWII, entered the Army, left a lieutenant, joined a stock brokerage, and enjoyed a career long and productive enough to put both his son and three grandsons through college (Babson, Middlebury, Colgate, and Vermont). His son David, Scott’s father, graduated from Babson in 1976 and found a job in a manufacturing company owned by a family friend. He and his wife make more than $175,000 a year.
These are not the life histories of middle America, yet somehow the “easy inevitability” of the father and grandfather is meant to contrast with Scott’s struggles. I wish the Times had picked a more suitable example. The current hiring market really is tough, and it is objectively reminiscent of the 1930s. But in a much more interesting and valid post on Economix yesterday, we see that college-educated men, like Scott, earn 21.6 percent more, in constant dollars, than they did in 1979. The returns to education have been even stronger for women, and the biggest losers have been poorly educated men. Unfortunately, the Times couldn’t find anyone to write that story about, so instead they inserted an extremely unsympathetic young man. That’s too bad, because the real story is worth telling.
*There are some obvious holes that either the author didn’t know or chose to gloss over. For example, Scott graduated in 2008, yet we’re told he’s been given only one job offer in the last five months. What happened between May 2008 and about January 2010? Were there other offers before then, or was he traveling or otherwise not looking seriously for work? These answers seem too important to ignore in a story about how hard it is for young Americans to find work.
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Whoops– MASSIVE retraction needed. I myself and my husband both were lucky enough to get through undergrad without debt. I can’t believe I didn’t remember this while writing the comment. I suppose I was thinking about our respective master’s degrees, both of which we are paying for on our own.
But I wonder if my obtuseness proves my point, in an “exception proves the rule” way. I meant it when I said I don’t know anyone else who didn’t at least do some kind of work-study or take a loan.
Anyway, sheepish apologies.
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Don’t forget this Times-front-page gem: “For Students, a Waiting List Is Scant Hope” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/education/14waitlist.html about a student who was (gasp) wait listed by Duke, followed the next day by this op-ed: “The Wait List Is the Hardest Part” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/opinion/15khan.html The contributor (a student at Cary Academy, a North Carolina private school) laments how the college-bound generation “excels at waiting” having “gotten used to it.”
Actually, the inflation-adjusted pay of people in their 20s has been falling for decades.
Yet another reason why this was an awful example, as the job turned down was for $2,000 more (adjusted for inflation) than a job I was lucky to get as a Colgate grad after nine months of looking in a similarly bad economy in 1983.
From a ruthless perspective, however, the young man may have a point. In each job I have sought since, the first question has always been what I earned in the previous job. That set my salary lower than those who graduated into better job markets before and after. More than 25 years later I am also more grateful to have a job than those who came of age in better times, despite having never been laid off since.
Oh, also: “He was braced for the conversation with his father in particular. While Scott Nicholson viewed the Hanover job as likely to stunt his career, David Nicholson, 57, accustomed to better times and easier mobility, viewed it as an opportunity. Once in the door, the father has insisted to his son, opportunities will present themselves — as they did in the father’s rise over 35 years to general manager of a manufacturing company.”
Just so I’m clear, the guy who entered the job market during the stagflation of the mid-seventies was “accustomed to better times and easier mobility”? Yeah, I guess 8% unemployment is “better” but it wasn’t exactly boom times for the dad either.
I also found little sympathy for Mr. Nicholson in a CCAP blog post.
http://collegeaffordability.bl.....-this.html
They did a similar story blaming the Student Loan industry for burrying a student in debt. She went to NYU, piled on $100,000 in debt to earn a women’s studies degree and couldn’t make the payments working as a photographers assistant. But her poor choices were the fault of the loan industry for making it too easy for her to do this.
Maybe they should just publish the Journal of Anecdotal Evidence – sample size 1. http://virtulearning.blogspot......again.html
I read this story too, and it bugged me. I am a generation beyond its subject, but of the hundreds of college graduates with whom I am acquainted, I know absolutely no one– none– who had their way paid for them through college by affluent grandparents and parents. How, tell me, is this at all representative of the experience of the vast majority of the American people?
“Trend Stories” are a result of the media’s connection with web SEO tactics. Have you ever noticed that a flurry of stories on one topic appear in clusters? Right now, “college educated and unemployed” is a hot trend.
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Chad, thanks for writing this and calling attention to the most glaring omissions and mistakes in the story. Maybe because I’m older than Scott (at 32), I cannot understand the arrogance of turning down a job that pays more than I make because it was “dead end”. Reminds me a little of this story: http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2009/12/06/living_in_a_van