Today, The New Yorker released a series of never-before-seen photographs of Barack Obama and his friends — including journalist Margot Mifflin — as students at Occidental College. The photos show a passionate, intelligent young man, a participant in activist and artistic communities who surrounded himself with other politically and aesthetically committed young people.
To briefly recap: America is currently in a student loan bubble, holding an unimaginably huge amount of student debt, as delinquency of loan payments swells, and even the well-off question whether they can afford college. It would seem, then, rather obvious that student loan debt is too big. Surprise: the people who control the higher education spigot—college admissions directors—disagree!
Trend science is a delicate art. The progression of a group or a place or an activity from "strange" to "offbeat" to "trendy" to "hateful" is one that can often only be precisely decoded by experts such as ourselves, or whatever other assholes have opinions on the internet. For example: we know for sure that urban farming is now a trend that can be classified as fully fauxhemian, and irrationally mocked accordingly. But what about kids who go to college, and then become farmers, out there in the country, where the farms are? Are they proper targets for our self-loathing turned outwards, yet?
If you don't have a book contract right this minute, you should very ashamed. Consider: Nathan Harden (pictured), a 2009 graduate of Yale, not only got a book contract, but has already written and published his book, and that book is about how bad it is that kids are into sex things at Yale—a topic that a professional book publishing house presumably considered sufficiently interesting to pay Nathan Harden U.S. currency, to write it.
We now take such things for granted, but it's important to remember that for hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, Europe underwent a long age of violence and terror, bereft of the wisdom and knowledge of the ancients, completely ignorant of which colleges were among the 20 Party Schools. We must consider ourselves lucky, then, that we live in an age where every year Princeton Review blesses us with a list of not just the Top 20 Party Schools but also a list of the Top 20 Stone-Cold Sober Campuses — a cornucopia of Schools We Would Never Want to Go To.
It's well known by now that you can spend outrageous sums to get a college degree only to find yourself jobless, through no real fault of your own. But it's also well known that college degrees are a decent bet, statistically speaking. I guess what the latest report is saying is: We ain't promising you the moon, okay?
This WSJ story today on the rising cost of college for the affluent is a cavalcade of shocking statistics about our current student debt crisis: the average price of a four-year college has more than doubled in real terms since 1985; three million households owe $50k or more in student loans, a number that's tripled since 1989, inflation-adjusted. When even the golf course set can't afford college, you know we have a problem.
In this world—the real world, where human beings are made of skin and bones and plasma—you are one of the many poor souls out there fighting to get (or keep) a job, to keep your bank account in the black just so that you can keep the water running and the lights on. You worry about the long-term future. How will I support a family? Is true success beyond the average American? Two decades from now, will I be even worse off than I am now? That's the real world.
Kristen Saban, daughter of University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, is as close to royalty as Alabama gets. She is also, according to a recently-filed lawsuit that alleges she beat the shit out of her sorority sister over a mean Facebook status, completely insane.
Congratulations are in order for the for-profit college industry, which won a major court ruling this week—a judge ruled that the Department of Education could not penalize these fake schools just because they routinely destroyed the financial future of their graduates. Here are the outrageous DoE rules, which were struck down as "arbitrary and capricious," via the WSJ:
When Michael Nicholson parents told him to pursue his education to the fullest, they likely didn't mean for him to still be a student at 71. But the Kalamazoo native just can't seem to get enough schooling: He's currently starting his 30th degree.
America is in the midst of a student loan bubble. College costs are increasing, student debt is increasing, job prospects are far from assured, and loan delinquency is on the rise. It's a big problem. The best idea for a solution that I've heard in a long time: let people buy into college students. Like little indentured servants, but not really!
Why are banks so enthusiastic about marketing their products to college students? Because college students, like most young people, don't know shit about shit. But unlike most kids, they have some money (even if they borrowed it). That means they are easy marks, and lucrative ones. A college student might think: "My school will protect my financial interests." See? I told you they were easy marks.
Okay, so it's graduation time and we Gawker folk have already exhausted ourselves giving you outgoing seniors all our super sweet advice. I'm sure you won't listen to ANY of it, because you're all so damn hungover. So let's spend today craning our necks and checking out all the other grads sitting around you. Graduates fall into very distinct types, and here are a few of them.
Shorter University is a little Baptist college in Georgia. Which is bad enough. But Shorter University is also a little Baptist college in Georgia run by hard-line Christian fundamentalists who are extremely concerned with the sex lives of all Shorter University employees, right down to the librarian.
It looks horrendous, but the University of Texas freshman suffered only "minor injures."
