As of First Quarter 2021, 3.8 million 20-24 year olds are not in school nor employed, 740,000 more young adults adrift than in First Quarter 2020. While wondering, “Where are they?”, more disturbing to consider is, “What are the long term consequences of a delayed entry into adulthood?” First, dismay may be transforming into disaffection.…
Many soon-to-be college graduates—in a time of economic upheaval and pandemic induced doubt—fatalistic and full of dread can relate to the most recent college student-produced meme. Currently, unemployment and underemployment of new college grads is increasing, and gateways to employment like internships and other extracurricular activities are drying up or are suspended at closed or…
In the 2009-2019 decade following The Great Financial Crisis, the top 5% experienced the greatest income increase of all Americans, further widening income disparities between the top and everyone else. Contributing to the wealth gap, during the same 2009-2019 decade, Millennials racked up nearly $893 billion in student loan debt to purchase college degrees as…
The middle class, and those aspiring to the middle class, families are incurring ever increasing amounts of debt to pay for consistently rising costs of attending college which many believe essential to achieve economic prosperity. Subsequently, to compensate for stagnating academic achievement in order to compete for college admissions, middle class parents are spending on…
In mid-March 2020, due to lockdowns (shelter-in-place orders) implemented often helter-skelter throughout the nation and around the globe, parents welcomed their college students who were sent home to their childhood bedrooms. Back home, living under the same roof simultaneously forced the transformation of the parent-adult children dynamic (when the child is no longer a child),…
As reported in a study by NORC (National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago: Optimism for the future generation has also fallen. In the wake of the outbreak, only 42% believe that when their children are their age their standard of living will be better than their own, whereas 57% said the same…
Many high school and college students, who are normally camp counselors, are unemployed as many in-person and residential summer programs were cancelled. While a financial deficit for many students in the short term, cascading consequences may also affect students’ prosperity in the long term. On May 24, Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal wrote…
“Adulting” classes may likely be the byproduct of a generation raised by “Helicopter Parents”, parents who don’t encourage self-sufficiency as their kid matures. Many students’ sole responsibilities have been managing schoolwork and extracurriculars, punctuated with the occasional “clean your room”, yet rarely do students I advise have part-time jobs. And, until the shelter-in-place, when school…
As the Class of 2020 finishes one chapter and commences on the next one, remember, the difficulties of Spring of 2020 and their unorthodox “graduation” doesn’t define the total value of their experience, but only punctuates their resiliency.
The above chart depicts that the wealthiest and upper middle class have not only regained their wealth previous to the 2008 recession, but gained greater wealth, at the expense of the middle class and poorest classes. And, now, middle class and poorer families are facing an even greater economic downturn that has yet to be…
Educators and students, participants in the Modern American Educational Industrial Complex, are mere glimmers of the Jeffersonian ideals of “essential merit”, which historian Joseph F. Kett defines as: …merit that rests on specific and visible achievements by an individual that were thought, in turn, to reflect that individual’s estimable character…’Merit’ was that quality in the…
Graph courtesy of The Wall Street Journal Current college students, many who find themselves at home though would rather be finishing their school year on college campuses around the country, will be confronting along with their older colleagues who graduated college in 2019, 2018, a possibly more complicated problem that of protracted unemployment. In addition,…
Dear The College Board CEO David Coleman: After viewing your live cast on Daily Homeroom with Sal [Khan of Khan Academy], I respectfully request responses to my questions regarding the 2020 Advanced Placement (AP) exams, as well as my concerns about your replies regarding current high school students’ and their families’ worries. In stating that…
In Parts 1 and 2, sentiment amongst college students and prospective college students may already be declining, which could be exacerbated even further, as we weather the current global pandemic with closed college campuses and students dispersed to their childhood homes. Additionally, the last of the Millennials are now college graduates, but experiencing a current…
Our parents are our first teachers and often are our primary teachers. As such, the responsibilities of parents are great to be “guides on the side”, not “the sage on the stage”. Then, our children blossom into the extraordinary beings they are. In an essay for People magazine, Michelle Obama shared the following lesson she…
