$42,918 — Average salary for men one year after graduating from college in 2009
$35,296 — Average salary for women one year after graduating
$26,600 — Average student loan debt for 2011 graduates
More stats of our lives
(Source: theweek.com)
And you thought vodka eyeballing was bad.
The University of Tennessee has suspended a fraternity for 30 days after one of its members was dumped at a hospital with a blood alcohol level of ”well over” 0.4 percent, five times the legal limit for driving and clearly within what doctors call the “death zone” for alcohol poisoning.
The thing is, the 20-year-old student hadn’t been drinking, exactly. According to Knoxville police, he and his Pi Kappa Alpha frat brothers had been giving one another “alcohol enemas.”
“The best way to fix this inefficiency is to address the root of the problem: Most bright students do not have any collateral and cannot easily pledge their future income…. Investors could finance students’ education with equity rather than debt. In exchange for their capital, the investors would receive a fraction of a student’s future income — or, even better, a fraction of the increase in her income that derives from college attendance. …”
U.S. taxpayers spend $43 billion a year subsidizing college education, but is there a better way to make sure underprivileged kids can go to college? University of Chicago business professor, Luigi Zingalas, thinks so.
(Source: theweek.com)
Should rich kids be ineligible for college scholarships? This year, UCLA awarded Justin Combs, son of Sean “Diddy” Combs, with a full, $54,000 merit-based scholarship and a spot in the school’s storied football program based on his impressive high school achievements. Justin’s music mogul father was recently named the wealthiest man in hip-hop by Forbes. With California’s state schools facing deep cuts, UCLA’s decision to offer Justin a chunk of its scarce resources is being widely criticized.
(Source: theweek.com)
While many college graduates aren’t exactly eager to give up a life of beer pong and afternoon classes for the daily drudgery of 9-to-5 office life, this year’s batch of newly minted adults faces an even greater problem: The possibility of no job at all. The unemployment rate remains above 8 percent nationwide, and young graduates are entering a market that’s more competitive than ever. “Truly, this is a terrible time to be young,” says Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman.
Here, some reasons new graduates might wish they could put off graduation:
1. The job market isn’t growing fast enough
The economy added a lackluster 115,000 jobs in April, which isn’t nearly enough to absorb the crush of graduates that will enter the market in the summer and beyond. And the unemployment rate for young people is much higher than the national average. Currently, the jobless rate for workers under age 25 is 16.4 percent.
2. They’re suffering from a “recession hangover”
“The class of 2012 faces tougher competition” than most young graduates, thanks to what’s been called a “recession hangover,” say Lauren Weber and Melissa Korn at The Wall Street Journal. Essentially, 2012 grads will be competing for jobs not only with their classmates, but with the many unemployed or underemployed graduates from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 who entered the workforce during the recession and its aftermath.
3. Companies are making do with unpaid interns
Several firms, aware that graduates are increasingly desperate for work experience, have boosted their ranks of unpaid interns to perform duties once done by regular employees, says Steven Greenhouse at The New York Times. The trend has “spread to fashion houses, book and magazine publishers, marketing companies, public relations firms, art galleries, talent agencies — even to some law firms,” reducing many graduates’ chances of seeing a paycheck.
The total amount of U.S. student debt has now reached the landmark of $1 trillion, surpassing the total credit card debt in the country. Even worse, unlike credit card debt or home mortgages, student debt cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy, so it follows us like a shadow throughout life. President Obama is right to push for lower interest rates for student loans, and his new proposal for universities not to raise tuition any further — though not nearly enough to change the fundamental picture — would certainly move the country in the right direction. Ultimately, we must make tuition costs completely tax deductible for the middle class rather than give tax cuts to the wealthy. Otherwise, a nation that mortgages the future of its younger generation to private companies, and molds their minds by the laws of the marketplace, is sitting on a dangerous bubble.
56.3 — Percent of 2011 college graduates under age 25 who were jobless or scraping by last year with work that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree
11 — Years since that jobless/underemployment rate was last this high
3 — Number of the 30 occupations with the most projected job growth that require a bachelor’s degree or higher
(Source: theweek.com)
Most college-bound high school seniors will know by May 1 if they got accepted to the school of their choice, or at least made the waitlist. But here’s a hard reality check: For most students, being waitlisted is “not much better than a rejection,” admissions consultant Elizabeth Heaton tells The Wall Street Journal. Other experts call the waitlist just plain ”mean.”
Just how bad are your chances of advancing past the waitlist? The numbers at elite universities are pretty grim: Yale took in 103 (out of 996), Carnegie Mellon accepted six (out of 5,003), Stanford took 13 (out of 1,078), and Cornell, zero (out of 2,998). Harvard, which won’t specify the size of its waitlist, admitted just 31. And it’s getting worse, says Caralee Adams at Education Week. More colleges are relying on waitlists — 48 percent in 2010, versus 34 percent in 2009 — and admitting a lower percentage of waitlisted students: 28 percent nationally in 2010, down from 34 percent in 2009. At more selective colleges, your odds are at about 11 percent.
The Great Recession hit California community colleges particularly hard, with spending cuts forcing administrators to cancel hundreds of classes, and the remaining classes growing overcrowded. One school’s has come up with a unique solution. Santa Monica College will charge students more to enroll in the most popular courses — five times more.
Behold, Pong Beer. In case college kids don’t have enough options for cheap swill, a brewing company has designed a beer exclusively for beer pong.
Er… incorrect.
For more bad opinions and horribly inaccurate predictions, check out the Bad Opinion Generator.
I enjoy being around children. I enjoy their enthusiasm. I just have a good time with them.
The average college basketball player is worth $265,000 per year while the average Football Bowl Subdivision player is worth $121,000. University of Texas football players are at the high end of the football scale — worth $513,000 each — while Duke’s basketball players are worth the most overall, about $1 million each.
A new report titled ”The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport” calculates the exact six-figure dollar values of various types of college athletes. The NCAA maintains that college players — “students first and athletes second” — are not paid because they are not university employees.
Here’s the argument for why college athletes deserve six-figure salaries
