RED the Book: The Millennials and the Myth of College

This post was written by Jordyn Turney, 19, an author of RED the Book, a collection of personal essays written by 58 American teenage girls, recently released in paperback and being workshopped for theater. She is attending community college in California and just completed her first YA novel, for which she is seeking the right agent and publisher.

It's the perfect storm (if by perfect you mean awful), and we Millennials are at the crux of it. Inflation, recession, and economic collapse are meeting a generation that is particularly ill-prepared to deal with it. We're young, inexperienced in everything besides social networking and schooling (which our whole lives are wrapped around), and we've been groomed to enter not today's world, but the world our parents entered as young adults -- one where college led to a good job and you could be sure your hard work would be rewarded. And for most of us, our school lives have been in preparation for not a career, but a degree. We're not taught to explore our talents -- unless those talents are test-taking -- or think about our future long-term. Long-term meaning beyond college.

Far from being the spoiled generation, older teenagers and twentysomethings are finding the simple things their parents were able to accomplish (like moving out, like newly married couples being able to buy a home) impossible. We were taught that college equaled success and that owning a house was still a reachable American Dream. Promises once thought to be reasonable are now being broken, and I see the results around me. Aside from the friends I have who live in college dorms -- an arrangement that they've all come to accept as just a one- to four-year respite before moving back in with their parents -- none of us can figure out how to leave our childhood homes. It seems impossible, even with roommates. We don't talk about growing up and buying a house; we worry about growing up and earning enough money to rent one.

At the outlet clothing store where I work (for now...), a coworker was telling me the other day how he wants to stay in San Diego but doesn't see how he'll be able to make enough money to stay in the town where he grew up. "We'll be the generation of cardboard boxes," I said, joking. But it's not really, not at all. I'm lucky enough to have parents who are able (and willing) to help me, but what about people who don't? Parents are struggling enough themselves. I fear that without mine I actually would be living in a cardboard box.

For my generation college is, if not a requirement, at least strongly recommended. So strongly recommended that it's often the only thing recommended. The California high school presented attending a UC university as not only the best option for me after high school, but the only one. They didn't discuss going to a vocational school, community college (which is what I'm currently attending) or any other four-year university. And they definitely didn't mention skipping higher education altogether. We have to change this thinking that college is the only way to succeed, and we have to change the fact that the way school prepares us for "life" currently means preparing us for "more schooling."

Coming from out of state I had no idea what UC even meant, but it was mentioned so often and touted so highly I was afraid to ask. High school students are pushed toward having a high GPA, taking honors classes and extracurriculars, and acing the SATs with one goal in mind: college. While the idea behind this is a good one -- according to an article in the Chicago Tribune late last year, the average college grad makes about $25,000 more annually than a nongrad -- the singlemindedness behind it is becoming ludicrous. Because the reality is that a college degree does not guarantee you a good job, and in our current recession, it may not guarantee you one at all. According to CNNmoney.com in November of 2008 there were about 1.413 million out-of-work college graduates. And what does this mean for the Millennial Generation?

As one of my friends -- who may as well have been speaking for all of my friends -- wrote on her Facebook page, "I have absolutely no idea what I want to do post-college. Now what?" Even though the question was around at the time of The Graduate, today it's far more an economic reality than an existential luxury. The average college graduate accumulates about three times more debt than a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve.

When I was able to graduate high school a year earlier than I'd expected, community college wound up being what I chose by default. I hadn't given college much prior thought, so I registered for community college because it was less stressful for me than scrambling to apply elsewhere and less expensive for my parents. Now, in my second semester here, I'm glad I didn't go to a four-year university right away, both because of cost and because I like the relative smallness and anonymity of my school. I'll actually miss it when I end up transferring elsewhere.

Still, I'm the rare one of my friends who's going the community-college-first route, and who's trying to avoid going to graduate school. I'm the rare one who thinks you should have a career goal (in my case teaching) in mind before spending years of your life, not to mention the money.

High schools, even middle schools, need to have on-track career programs that gear students toward a field, not just a university campus. Students are people and people have widely varied interests. However, in our intellectual society -- one that's unaccustomed to economic recession, really -- many of those interests are not given the same respect as academic pursuits. My sister, for instance, is interested in fashion and design. And she's good at it. But when does school ever encourage you to look into an apprenticeship in fashion over going to a traditional college? All students are shuffled through the same classes and the same tests, but the one-size-fits-all method isn't working.

The Millennial Generation has, you might say, been raised from a perspective of privilege. We came from successful parents who, for much of our childhoods, were prospering. We were told that we were great, special, unique by our parents and teachers. We were brought up never knowing a world that wasn't constantly, instantly connected. And yet the paradox is that as Millennials come into adulthood, loaded up with technology's luxuries (iPhones and DVRs), the things weighing on our minds are still the most Depression-era basics: How am I going to find a job that pays enough for me to live off of? Will it be able to justify the cost (in both time and money) of my degree? What will I do for medical insurance once I graduate? And, How long will it be before I can move out of my parents' house?

And the answers to these questions aren't Google-able. Despite our technological know-how and our higher education, we don't have them. The world our parents grew up in no longer exists. In its place is a world where a college degree is no guarantee of success, jobs are hard to come by, and the young newlywed couple living with parents is becoming the norm. Where spoiled no longer means expensive cars and vacation houses, but a car that works and parents paying for education at a state college.

My generation is growing up, and it is scary. The future is full of uncertainty and the outlook seems more bad than good. It's lucky we're an optimistic bunch, raised on hope and confidence in ourselves, because I have a feeling that in our adult lives we will desperately need it.

Comments

[kmbrh]

Education in the US is totally skewed towards a college degree, for no good reason, really.

25 years ago, when I was a junior at an actual university—after getting an AA at a jc for the usual financial reasons—one of my professors had written "A University is NOT a Trade School" on the blackboard. Sadly, at the time I had never even heard of a trade school. As I am sure a lot of today's high school and college students have not. The statement was further explained that the University was not a place to learn how to do something specific, it was a place to learn how to think. It was news to me!

The first year or two out of college just sucks. Period. For a lot of college graduates, especially liberal arts and business majors, there is no specific slot for these newly minted "thinkers." They go from the euphoria of achieving a degree to the realization that the business world is not impressed. The expensive education prepares them for...an education on the job.

A college degree for most students, outside of the sciences, is an expensive piece of paper that certifies they have basic skills, and most importantly the work ethic, that used to be expected from a high school graduate.

A university is a trade school after all. Just not a very good one.

[carrieanna]

What I think is saddest is people who equate a university education only as it relates to their career prospects. What about the beauty of knowledge? What about the opportunities of studying radically different subjects, ones that the student may never have considered? What about having a common base of understanding our world?

Life isn't only about making money. Economizing our lives for profit potential is a dreadful idea.

[CharlieMarlowe]

In brutal Darwinian terms you have to adapt tp the environment or face extinction. Since the norms and values of the past are no longer tenable, they need to be discarded, or , at least re-assessed. Those who want the 2.3 children, the white picket fence, two cars in the garage, college education and wedding ceremonies that put you into debt will suffer. The new Thoreaus will survive.

[NetworkGuy]

Wow, these sure are new problems these youngsters face. Not like my pampered generation. I remember well the excesses of my teen years in the 70's, The choice between food or heat. My dad was likely to return home from work with the news there was no more work. Sometimes he was late because no one could give him a ride home and he had to hitchhike the 20 miles home. When I graduated high school, my choices were join the military or keep working at the gas station. I was blissfully unencumbered of thoughts of college or buying a home. I enlisted. I got married. We lived in tiny furnished apartments, with not so tiny roaches. I drove/pushed a very used 300 buck AMC Hornet to work, until it got stolen. This isn't a woe-is-me rant. It's meant to illustrate the fact that there are realities, regardless of generation, the author has never even had to consider.

[Shotgun Mary]

I just love how every time there is an article about Millenials, some Gen X'er comes out of the wood work and goes "Hey, what about me! I'm important too! I did . . .stuff . . . "

[EinChicago]

"stuff" would be a massive improvement over the squat done by Gen Yner so far, don'tcha think?


The problem with Gen Yner is tehy have done absolutely nothing and yet want credit for everything.


Come back in 10 years when you've accomplished something. Anything.


Until then, Gen Yner needs to stop trying so hard to out whine the Boomers.

[jeanrenoir]

As a college professor born in 1943, I know the Millennials well, and I feel profoundly sorry for them. From the womb, they were such extensions of the narcissistic egos of their Boomer parents, that the parents wanted to give them the "perfect" birth, the "perfect" pre-school, the "perfect" bicycle helmet, the perfect SAT cram course, and the perfect boob job, since the parents wanted to be as "proud" of the Millennials as they were of the McMansions they pretended they could afford. The Boomers themselves had lived life entirely in the Yelow Submarine of their narcissistic fantasies and the prosperity and superpower of America which victories over Nazis, Imperial Japanese, and Russians given them by the self-sacrifice and hard-earned realism and maturity of their parents' Greatest Generation, the one the Boomers never tired of reviling, from their matriculation at Columbia or Harvard, all paid for my Daddy, on. Like spoiled trust fund babies, the Boomers lived life as a spree, from Woodstock to yuppie greed, always assuming that there would be enough money to pay the piper because Daddy had given them so much. Too bad the Boomer's choice of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds over the harsh truth led them to bankrupt America, and leave it vulnerable to the tender mercies of Bin Laden, just as the kids they supposedly wanted to "protect" were condemned to pay their parents' debts and watch their country collapse.

[EinChicago]

Ummmm. There is nothing new in this thread that the Generation Y-ners are facing except your propensity to whine about it.

Pretty much every point can be echoed in films like Reality Bites which show Gens X already went through this decades ago-- just with much less "Where is my silver platter" public declarations of self-entitlement.

Generation Y-ner scares the heck out of me. They're evn more self-indulgent, whiney and self-entitled than the Boomers.