Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 18, 2014

Alex, please give Sam a dose of reality. You owe it to BD – he introduced you to Leo.

I think I hate this arc.

C’mon, Sam. You can do it!

El delusion MUY GRANDE!

Maybe she can get a Liberal Arts degree in cartooning and then complain about how there are no jobs and her unemployment benefits running out.

Let’s say you are over 40, and the college you went to was the very best you could get into. Now let’s say you are 18, with the same qualifications you had then: same activities, GPA, test scores, etc. Guess what? You would have no chance of getting into your college now. And if your family had the same income (adjusted for general inflation) that your family had then, it would be much harder for them to pay for that college than it was then. Just take a minor item: remember what you spent on books? And the old typewriter you lugged to campus? (One of my roommates didn’t even have that: he hand wrote everything in neat cursive.) Current students spend a good deal more and are required to have their own computer, too boot, and often submit their “papers” electronically. And of course, every one has a phone. We had one phone, on the wall in the hall, that we all shared. On the other hand, the number of colleges is higher, and with online education on the rise, and the college-age population shrinking, there is some concern that many colleges are going to disappear in the next decade or two from the lack of qualified student with the means to pay for an on-campus education.

It’s all about the grades, the outside activities, the positions held….

How much do we even know about Sam? She actually might be a very smart student.

Well, she does have ambition, but is it realistic?

I’ve worked with people from other countries in a couple of jobs. I’ve found them to be knowledgeable, hard working, having excellent self discipline and not engaging in inappropriate behaviors. They wouldn’t “advance” until they started to cozy up to the boss, which probably wasn’t part of how they were raised to be in their countries. When I worked as a laborer – among the lewd, crude and unsubdued – a coworker defined success as “not what you know but who you bl_*.”

Cornell, dad-blast it!

We wrote our papers in cursive, had only one phone in our hallway. Even had fewer chemical elements to worry about. Each sex had their own dorm, which is how “panty raids” developed. But, we knew how to spell “too”.Also, we could probably get a job after graduation.Unless you were drafted!

“Now, you gotta have some damned Ivy League pedigree, and your great-grandfather had to be CEO of some Acme Corporation just to get an entry-level job!!”-A wee bit of exaggeration there?.I see high school drop-outs getting jobs every day. They aren’t good jobs because people don’t tend to pay well for people who can’t do the easiest job of their lives: go to school. Nonetheless, they are jobs.-I don’t care personally, but it is interesting that the more you have to pay a person for an entry-level job, the more he has to bring to the table. Thus, the ones who most need the experience to get better jobs are held back by the well-meaning minimum wage laws.,Oh well, everybody knows not paying high minimum wage is far more important than actually getting a job and getting any work experience, so I guess they are just casualties of the war on poverty.

“Most of those getting minimum wage are skilled and educated and are working in a hidden quiet Depression.”.Such has not been my experience.Most of the ones I know are not educated in much more than fast food.

I agree, as well. Not a fan of Bart or Homer, either. I don’t like stupidity, or ignorant characters. Any little girl who can play a baritone saxophone with skill, is cool in my book !! :-)

Garbage inGarbage out.And if you are a.ble to read the Bureau of Labor Statistics demographics report, you will realize your statements are garbage with less than 13 percent of minimum wage workers with a college degree of any kind..

So, even Alex is dubious about this idea…

And the average age is 29 with only 40% older than 25..Do you make up ALL your “facts”?