March, 2012

Inspiration / Opinions / Read — No Comments
28
Mar 12

Are rich people more unethical than poor people?

In response to our ongoing investigative series on student debt, we were recently sent an interesting graphic that laid out the results of a study that concluded wealthier people were more unethical than those with lower incomes.

Apparently, rich people are twice as likely to take candy from a jar designated for children, rich men are more likely to cheat on their wives than poor men, and wealthy folks donate less to charity.

I’m not sure exactly where the data came from or the study’s sample size and methodology, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these numbers, but this certainly adds a bit of an empirical angle to the “rich people are out of touch/cruel bastards” argument.

Check out the graphic below to delve a bit deeper into the stats.

Rich People Are Unethical
Created by: AccountingDegreeOnline.net

-Eugene

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26
Mar 12

Budget Cuts Force Cal State To Freeze Enrollment

It’s shocking to see how desperate the situation has become for California’s public universities.

The latest disaster in the ongoing budget saga for the once highly respected educational institution came last week when the California State University (CSU) system announced that it would not accept any new admissions for the 2013 spring semester – barring a few small exceptions.

The announcement comes as part of a last ditch effort to save the CSUs by reducing costs and slashing enrollment by about 16,000 students next spring. In addition, another 20,000 to 25,000 students could be kept from enrolling at CSUs for the 2013-2014 academic year if California voters reject a proposed tax measure that could help save the schools.

If the prop – which hasn’t qualified for the ballot yet – fails, CSU would suffer from automatic funding cuts of $200 million. This of course comes in addition to the $750 million budget razing that CSUs were subjected to this year.

As a result of all the budget cuts, CSU schools have been forced to raise tuition and mandatory fees to more than $7,000, roughly double the cost to attend in 2007. Rather than raise fees even further, school administrators have decided to simply close the campus to new students during the spring semester when transfers from community colleges generally flood the CUS system to finish their college education.

To read more about this disturbing development, head over to the Chronicle.

-Eugene

Adventures / Opinions / Read — No Comments
21
Mar 12

Generation Y Goes Nowhere. Or Do We?

A recent NY Times op-ed has sparked an interesting debate about the current generation and our seemingly sedentary nature.

In their piece “The Go-Nowhere Generation,” Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz argue that Americans have always prided themselves on action, taking to the road, and seizing opportunities, especially when times are tough.

As evidence they point to Depression-era families who packed up their belongings and left the Dust Bowl  to find work, the ”pilgrims leapt onto leaky boats to get here,” and “the ’60s kids joined the Peace Corps.”

Unfortunately, according to the Buchholzs in the last thirty years American teens have become increasingly sedentary and no longer chase their dreams by shipping off to new cities in search of adventure and gainful employment.

According to Census Bureau data, the likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s. In addition the number of new licenses has dropped as well. In the early 80s, 80 percent of 18 year olds had licenses, but now that number is 65 percent. Apparently, even bicycle sales are lower now than just a decade ago.

“Today’s generation is literally going nowhere,” the Buccholzs write provocatively. “This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about.”

The Buccholzs wonder why young folks aren’t leaving areas with high unemployment like Nevada with a 13 percent jobless rate and heading to North Dkota which has a 3.3 unemployment rate. In response to their thought provoking op-ed, the NY Times was deluded with letters penned by young folks with a bevy of interesting responses.

Tom Toro of Berkeley, California writes:

“The return to Gilded Age levels of income disparity has laid bare the fact that very few people profit from the masses’ toil, and that hard work alone is not enough to survive. We are not a timid and unambitious generation; we are realistic and disillusioned.

Also, we are perhaps the first generation to truly understand the environmental costs of America’s unrelenting emphasis on independence. Driving across time zones destroys the atmosphere; setting up new households diminishes resources. Should our benchmark of success really be a car, a dishwasher, a TV, a computer, a microwave oven per person? So why decry a societal shift toward localism? What’s so bad about staying rooted in your hometown and riding a bicycle to work?”

Well said Toro, although according to the op-ed bicycles sales are down, so I guess young folks are either walking or taking public transportation to work.

To read the original piece, click here, and to see the responses, click here.

-Eugene

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19
Mar 12

Harvard Now Cheaper Than Public Schools in California

What the what?? Things have gotten so out of hand in California that it is now cheaper to attend Harvard University than one the state’s once vaunted public universities.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that a California family of four making $130,000 would have to pay nearly $24,000 including tuition, on-campus room and board, supplies, and other expenses to  send their child a Cal State school. In contrast that family would have to pay only $17,000 to send their child to Harvard. Meanwhile UC Santa Cruz is even more expensive, clocking in at roughly $33,000.

What does this all mean?

“We are coming close to pricing out many of our middle-class students,” explained Rhonda Johnson, Cal State East Bay’s financial-aid director. “Now we’re seeing a disadvantaged middle class.”

Dean Kulju, financial-aid director of the 400,000-student Cal State system, which has more than doubled its tuition since 2007, put it weakly. ”It does sort of put you in an awkward spot.”

Well said Kulju, an awkward spot indeed.

-Eugene

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15
Mar 12

Voices From the Field – Angel R.

In going to a prestigious university, I had hoped that all my dreams would come true. That was the bright-eyed and very naïve 17-year old version of my former self that is a far cry from the indebted, morose, and pessimistic shell I have become. That might be a bit of a stretch, but not my much.

It has been many years since I graduated from UCLA in 2006, but the effects of the debt I acquired during my time there still linger and weigh on me, every single day of my life. With the average cost of attending the school set at about $30,000 a year, I pretty much accumulated a debt that placed me over the $100K mark. While I should be, at 29, in a position where I should be buying a house, I am, instead, living with my parents working as a substitute teacher because there are no jobs available in Fresno, CA, a city whose unemployment rate is well over the national average. I am under-employed and barely make enough to pay for my living expenses. I make nowhere near the amount needed to even consider paying my student loan bills, which would be a little over $1,000 a month (if I could afford to pay them, which I can’t). I am in a world of hurt and I know that I am not the only one.

People may say that I was not being fiscally responsible and I hear those words and take heed of them, now especially. Still, I am not asking for a bailout. Far from it. But, I am asking for a fair shake. I am asking not to be hounded by debt collectors at all hours of the day. As it stands, all students are at the complete mercy of financial institutions, like Sallie Mae, that can do whatever they want to fill their fat wallets. There are no consumer rights for students in debt. You can be a dead beat dad or accumulate a world of credit card debt and find your way out of a dire situation through various means of discharging debt. The same is not true of student loans. This debt is breaking us all and I have finally been moved to voice my own words and spotlight those of others, focusing on the creation of SavetheStudents.com, a blog aimed at informing others of the pitfalls associated with student loans. After all, we all deserve to be informed and to be heard. All we want is a chance. All we want is a shot. This is not the American Dream we thought we were buying. Not at all.

-Angel R.

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14
Mar 12

Obama to U.S. Governors: Stop cutting education budgets

In case you missed it, President Obama recently put the nation’s governors on notice in a speech at the White House regarding education.

Devoting the bulk of his remarks at the National Governors Association Meeting to investing in education and making college affordable, President Obama bluntly stated that even with the current fiscal climate, cutting education funds in state budgets is not an option.

“We’ve all faced some stark choices over the past several years.  But that is no excuse to lose sight of what matters most.  And the fact is that too many states are making cuts to education that I believe are simply too big,” the President said.

Obama went on to say, “Budgets are about choices. So today I’m calling on all of you:  Invest more in education.  Invest more in our children and in our future.  That does not mean you’ve got to invest in things that aren’t working.  That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense to break some china and move aggressively on reform.  But the fact of the matter is we don’t have to choose between resources and reform; we need resources and reform.”

More concretely, the President is calling on reducing the burden of student loans for higher education.

“Today, graduates who take out loans leave college owing an average of $25,000,” he said. “That’s a staggering amount for young people.  Americans now owe more in student loan debt than they do in credit card debt.  There’s so many Americans out there with so much to offer who are saddled with debt before they even start out in life.  And the very idea of owing that much money puts college out of reach for far too many families.

So my administration has tried to do our part by making sure that the student loan program puts students before banks, by increasing aid like the Pell grants for millions of students and their families, and by allowing students to cap their monthly loan payments at 10 percent of their income, which means that their repayment schedule is manageable.”

Congress still needs to do its part by, first of all, keeping student interest rates low.  Right now, they are scheduled to double at the end of July if Congress does not act.  And that would be a real tragedy for an awful lot of families around the country.  They also need to extend the tuition tax credit for the middle class, protect Pell grants, and expand work-study programs.”

To read the full transcript click here.

-Eugene

DIY / Inspiration / Watch — No Comments
12
Mar 12

Shock and Awe

For the past ten years, Ethan Rafal has been travelling the country, documenting the nation’s struggle to come to terms with 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A former skate videographer, Rafal opted to abandon his first love to pursue photography in an attempt to grapple with the traumatic events that changed the nation. For much of the country, the last decade of war has largely been a distant experience, especially in light of the continuing economic problems at home, but for Rafal, the war hits much closer to home.

In Shock and Awe, Rafal collects five years of photos taken after 9/11. As he explains it, “Five years later, after photographing war and losing several friends to it, I rediscovered this early material. It held acute personal significance, as it was the remains of my youth. But, I also believed it might provide a window into the early stages of national moral and corporeal collapse that seemed everywhere around me. I decided to engage this project full-time. I wanted to revisit the country I had once known. I wanted to tell the unheard story of the decaying American homeland and its relationship to war.”

“My subjects are as much a reflection of myself as they are products of this time. But, I too am a product of this time, and it has been my primary task to reclaim my story and myself from the fog that is the last decade,” he adds. “Ultimately, this work is autobiographical, and it is my hope that in my search you see yourself, too.”

Rafal is currently raising funds on Kickstarter to print the first edition of his book, which will recreate the look and feel of his original hand-made journal.

For more information on the project, check out the video below and if you’d like to help out, head over to Kickstarter and donate what you can now, but hurry, the fundraising deadline is today at midnight.

Inspiration / Read — No Comments
7
Mar 12

Is The Lottery System Broken?

The formula is time-honored and tested: you move to City A in hopes of making it big in the industry of your choice. If you withstand the bumps and shocks along the way, you might forge that dream career. If you decide the pain isn’t worth the gain, you can drop off into a host of other, perhaps more stable, career choices. Either way, you win.

At least in theory. As the New York Times reports, the traditional “lottery” model- where some succeed, and many others choose alternate careers- has enlivened cities for decades. It’s a system that is alive in many industries where success is infrequent and constrained to a talented few- music, film, writing, photography.

As economics reporter Adam Davidson explains:

“…it’s cheaper for talent agencies and studios to hire a lot of young workers and run them through a few years of low-paying drudgery…This occupational centrifuge allows workers to effectively sort themselves out based on skill and drive. Over time, some will lose their commitment; others will realize that they don’t have the right talent set; others will find that they’re better at something else.”

It’s this self-discovery that makes the lottery system work for so many people- they set out with one career in mind, then switch to another, more suitable industry. But what happens when those more stable career options- the ones that act as a good safety net for those people who don’t find success as actors or musicians- are no longer available?

The fascinating piece dives deeper into this issue, so take a moment to read the conclusions. But this problem of the vanishing jobs also intersects with our own student debt series. It can be a lot harder to pay off student debt when your career path out of college is restricted to jobs that do not require a college degree. The same “plan B” jobs that are an integral part of the “lottery” are also an integral part of many college graduates’ plans. Without them, everyone suffers.

There are ways out, though. Experts weighing in recommend switching jobs when possible, so you don’t get stuck in a job that isn’t leading toward a career, whether you’re aiming for the stars or looking to pay the rent.

-Matt

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