There’s no fool like an old fool? Try, There’s no fool like a ‘know it all young fool’

coachisright.com ^ | JANUARY 1ST, 2013 | Kevin “Coach” Collins

[jmaroneps37]

The gap between the earnings of those below 35 and those over 35 is now sufficiently large to say the younger generation will NOT live better than their parents or grandparents.

This generation, tagged Generation Y, is seeing its window close and a growing likelihood it will be the first generation in American history to live less well than previous generations.

Generation Y men and women with skills and educational levels that should have been gateways to at least an upper middle class life are finding the positions they trained for in the various professions either don’t exist or are so rare as to be all but impossible to secure.

One recent law school graduate has bitterly commented, “I had a lot of faith in the system, the mythology that if you work really hard you can achieve anything, and the stock market always goes up. It was pretty naïve on my part.”

Generation Y professionals have seen their average incomes fall by 8% since the beginning of 2008 and their unemployment rate is consistently higher than the general population.

A Rutgers University survey of 2006 college graduates found only 20% even expected to live better than their parents, a level of pessimism that is well founded in light of their almost 50% unemployment rate. Moreover only 20% said their current job was part of their long term career path.

Realizing they have been fooled

“… a 33 year old 2009 law school graduate ….. saying her belief that the education she was receiving was valuable was “…pretty naïve on my part.”

She is a plaintiff in a class action law suit against the San Francisco School of Law from which she graduated. The suit alleges the school overstated available positions and graduates’ potential earnings….

[Vigilanteman]

This whole problem could be solved virtually overnight if every college and university in America was forced to adopt the same financing formula used by Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Hillsdale has their own pool of lenders and a sort of perpetual education fund whose seed money was provided by successful graduates and other admirers of the institution. They also have a very low default rate because they are a conservative college and teach kids useful, marketable skills which turn into actual jobs and enable them to repay the loans.