THE effective unemployment rate among 18-29 year olds is 15.1 percent and the average college graduate has $30,000 in student debt. The unemployment rate is lower for women than for men.

— Comments —

Paul writes:

I am glad you revisit this issue.  It is amazing that the modern college student graduates with a $30,000 debt.  Instead of going to their local public university or affordable Catholic University (i.e., not Notre Dame), they insist on “going off to college” instead of living at home and working part time (as I did at various occupations), even to a small degree.  I and all of my closest friends lived at home and went to the excellent local public university and graduated without a cent of debt.

One friend became the vice-president of a nine billion dollar corporation.  Another became the manager of the ultra-secretive regional paleontology department of a huge multi-national oil company.  Another became a plaintiff attorney who has obtained fifty million dollars in judgments at last count, which is a few years old.  Another decided to take on five children and an awfully difficult career working up bids on telecommunication wiring.  (As a liberal arts graduate, he hated math, but he had to get with it to support his family and realized it is mostly practice.)  His wife, who obtained a PhD during their marriage, did not go into debt.  She now is a dean.

Another tactic is to stay at home, get a job out of high school, and save your money.  That is what I did after graduating from my university.  I lived at home, worked several years, and saved my money, which I invested.  (No Camaro.  Instead, a reliable six-year-old Ford Maverick with an evil truck clutch and an evil muscle-building lever on the column that I endured for ten years.  I was horrified the other day upon discovering Ford has reintroduced the Maverick.)  I admit to working the system legally such that I ended up paying nothing (that is, using my investment revenue and a student loan) for my law degree from a local Catholic law school.  Of course, I worked summers.  So I still had the assets I had before law school.  We can’t all work the system as successfully, but I would have still ended up in the black had I not gotten a loan.

And the student should not worry about falling behind their peers by delaying college.  They don’t realize how young they are.  Many amazing young men go into the military, go to college, and go into successful careers.  Students think, as I did, a few years mean a lot.  The years don’t.  If the average life span is 78, the percentage of time using the above strategy is 3.8 percent.  (Also, babes like male maturity.)

And students should not be overly impressed with fancy universities, which admittedly provide valuable contacts.  I heard this multiple times from students that attended my local public university.  A highly intelligent son of an older physician that I knew went to Notre Dame.  He came home one summer and took physics at my former university.  He said it was the hardest course he had ever taken.  I don’t recall his grade.  I made A’s in both semesters.  My point is not to brag.  He was certainly smarter than me.  (His Daddy was one of the two smartest people I have known.)  It is to illustrate that if a student wants to succeed, he or she can do so at the local university by applying themselves.

And while at home, the student should not make Ma call looking for them at 8:00 a.m.  Cell phones hopefully have solved that problem since my day.  Ma is not a hotel clerk.  Ma loves her child to an extent only a Ma can grasp.

 Laura writes:

Who is Ma looking for at 8 a.m.?

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