Loving data means I have to keep loving it even when it tells me stuff I don’t want to know. Jack Hough of SmartMoney has a bundle of charts, graphs, and figures showing the dismal facts that a college education is so effing over-the-top expensive that it’s no longer worth it (financially speaking) to get a four-year degree. His argument looks only at things from a purely monetary perspective, and he also assumes that everyone involved (college-educated Bill and non-college-educated Ernie) was good at saving money before they even graduated from high school. I’m not sure very many of these mythical teens exist, but whatever.

The point Mr. Hough is trying to make is difficult to argue with: Paying for higher education sucks, and if it continues to suck so viciously that it slowly removes the souls of the college educated, then no one’s going to pay the price of matriculation. And then where will we be? Apparently, if we’re all good savers, we’ll be ahead financially but way behind on the higher education front.

I’m not saying you have to go to college to learn how to ponder the big questions and see the big picture, but it helps. Real life, with the jobs and the family and the house and the dog is already pretty full; the majority of the population doesn’t have the time or the energy at the end of the work week to load up on philosophy, engineering, calculus, chemistry, biology and literature texts from the library and spend the weekend absorbing and pondering.

I just want everyone (everyone, even the people I don’t like) to have access to an affordable education. Privilege should play no part in who gets to learn the cool stuff. Earning a college degree should neither set a student back financially nor should it be so horrendous that a large number of young adults feel like they have to just skip it altogether.

Isn’t the whole reason behind mankind amassing a gajillion years’ worth of knowledge, to improve all of mankind’s men and women? If only a privileged percentage of the humans get to learn the full depth of the accumulated smartness, then what’s the point? Until the day comes when the powers that be manage to remove their proverbial heads from their proverbial asses and make education less of a privilege and more of a right, higher education is going to seem like a financial blunder. Please please please try to just say “F**k it!” and go to college anyway, damn the consequences.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Karen Schweitzer has a guest post up at Learn Me Good, one of my favorite education blogs. The post is a list of 25 Edu Blogs Worth Reading, and Educated Nation is included, which is lovely. Lovelier still is having a new list of education blogs to peruse (because I can’t seem to get enough).

As far as Learn Me Good goes, if you haven’t read John Pearson’s book or blog (they share the same title), I highly recommend both. You have to respect a guy who can write with such hilarity about his first year of teaching; how does one find humor in any trial by fire, especially one’s own?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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There is no grey area in classifying me as a door-closed worker bee. I am hard-wired to focus with extreme intensity on tasks and goals and To Do lists. I can’t not be in motion. I’m one of those jackasses who looks forward with unquellable elation to a long-planned and well-deserved vacation, and by Day #3 I’m done with sitting around and reading and have begun cataloguing and alphabetizing anything that’s not nailed down. I know. I disgust even myself. And while no one has ever accused me of being a slacker, almost everyone who knows and loves me has told me (for my own good and for the sanity of those around me) that maybe it would be better if I took it down a notch, for Pete’s sake.

Too bad for me that, due to my preference for having the office door closed and for all distractions to be annihilated with my laser-beam eyes the moment they open their yaps to ask me a question or tell me something inane that has nothing whatsoever to do with my current task, I will probably not choose the problem or endeavor that will be important enough to catapult me to fame. Or so theorizes Richard Hamming in his talk, “You and Your Research.” I’m not a research scientist, but I think Hamming’s theory is applicable to all humans, regardless of their field.

This talk centered on Hamming’s observations and research on the question “Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?” From his more than forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.

Here’s what he had to say about those who work with the door open vs. those who prefer to work distraction-free:

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, “The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.” I don’t know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing – not much, but enough that they miss fame.

So, clearly I’m probably going to be missing the chance to take note of, and then solve, the big and interesting problems of our day. I know myself pretty well, and I could have told you years ago that I will always tend toward missing the important stuff as I will be too busy crossing s**t off of my list.

While I like the fact that I’m not a slacker, I am trying to re-wire myself enough so that I’ll be better able to stop the train and focus on the present day, instead of constantly looking to the horizon, which seems always to be the thing I’m trying to get to. (And for anyone who paid attention in Reality 101, please won’t you slap me and tell me again that it’s impossible to ever get to the horizon, which means I’ll never be finished, so its probably okay to just take a breather every now and then).

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(via Ben Casnocha)

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As I’ve mentioned previously, I am fascinated by what goes on behind the curtain. I can’t stop thinking about the education, training and knowledge that goes into all the professional actions that play out right in front of me. I’m not nearly as enthralled by the worker and the job they’re doing as I am by all the know-how they surely must have packed into their brain. I want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing and how they knew to do it in that particular way.

Professional athletes are workers (in their own high-pressure, playful sort of way). I would never classify myself as an avid sports fan, but I can appreciate the grace and skill involved. Again, what I’m really thinking about when I’m watching a game is how the players and the coaches have taken decades of amassed sports knowledge and are applying it all right before my eyes.

There’s all the game strategy—which players to put in at what point in the game based on the players themselves, how the game in question is proceeding, and on which of the opposing team’s players are on the field—and the training methods, including specific movements that have been engrained in the players’ muscle memory, etc. During any given play, all of that knowledge, training, strategy, muscle memory, and talent combine in a fraction of a second with the players’ instincts to create an amazing moment that I get to witness.

Sports psychologists are one of the fascinating behind-the-curtain elements on the sports team staff. A lot of athletes, especially the do-it-for-money variety, appreciate a highly educated pep talk when they’ve hit a slump and are psyching themselves out. It’s understandable; if I had a gajillion dollar contract to be awesome (or else) and thousands of people watched me do my job, I’d need a damn sports shrink, too.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (no longer an actual newspaper) has this article about the Mariners’ sports psychologist, Steve Hecht, and what it is, exactly, that he does for the players. It’s info from behind the curtain, and it’s even more interesting than watching an actual game (although perhaps only to me).

Further Reading and Resources:

What is a Sport Psychologist?
BLS Occupational Outlook: Psychologists
Sports Psychology Degrees and Careers
Sports Psychology Degree Programs: How to Become a Sports Psychologist
Univ. of Iowa, Dept. of Health and Sport Studies
SportPsychology.com
Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP)
North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image credit: zuma press)

It has never been the best idea to only understand one language (it tends to be a bit limiting with respect to one’s academic, social, and work life). Plus, it’s really good for your brain to make it work a little in order to wrap itself around a new language; it’s like brain yoga and increases your academic prowess (if you know what I mean).

As society becomes increasingly global in its ventures and contacts, the more languages we, as individuals, can grasp, the better. To that end, here’s a rather extensive Master List of Free Language Learning Resources. The list is long, and includes resources across a range of different media. Go learn some stuff!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Pep talks should include a concrete bit of take-away advice. Here are two posts and a book by Lindsay Pollack in which she dispenses advice similar to mine (i.e., rarely will forward motion take you in the wrong direction), but she somehow manages to dispense her wisdom in a manner several degrees kinder than mine.

Two posts about job-searching in a recession for the newly graduated:

How Part-Time Work and Volunteering Can Help You Find a Job

Finding a Job After Graduation

Ms. Pollack’s Book:

Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Yes, the recession sucks. For everyone. Not just for the newly graduated who are spending their first few post-college moments wondering why they spent four years and an obscene amount of money earning a degree that won’t, as it turns out, guarantee them a job so they can pay off those student loans. Reality, as I have learned after 35 years on the planet, is rarely subtle. It almost always comes in shockingly large, crotch-kicking doses that we coddled human beings tend not to be prepared for.

Which is to say, suck it up, grab onto those boot straps, keep using your brain, and just find a damn job. The job you find will almost certainly not be the career-launching moment you’d envisioned for yourself four years ago. Too bad. Times are tough. Aim for any job that falls under the general category of your dream career, make some money, accrue some experience. Don’t be sad and whiny and pathetic and sit on your (parent’s) couch and bitch about how effing brilliant you are and how heartbreaking it is that no one will hire you.

No one is hiring anyone, and any companies that are hiring have a whole slew of recently laid-off, older, educated, certainly smart and definitely experienced, people to choose from. And that is not you. You, my adorable little newbie, are still wet behind your brilliant little ears, and even though your brain is packed full of ridiculous volumes of facts and knowledge, and even though you were a technology whisperer when you were still pooping in your pants, you have no experience in the real world. Which is why you’re crying on your parent’s couch and don’t yet understand how to buckle down and get it done (as it were).

Again I say: most humans do not enjoy reality. Animals probably don’t either, but they have always resided in the nasty, brutish and short state of nature and don’t have the questionably useful levels of higher thought that we humans are so fortunate to possess. If animals sat around pondering the suckiness of reality, they’d be off their guard and would get eaten by all the bigger, less-thinking animals.

The moral being: It’s okay for humans to employ higher thought and ponder the crapshoot that is our reality, but while pondering and thinking, keep moving forward and get a job—almost any job will do at this point—so you can survive in a down economy. Worry about sculpting your career to a state of sublime perfection later; at the moment the fittest will be surviving by adding interesting bullet-points to their résumés.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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In the excellent model of peer-to-peer lending (e.g., Kiva.org), three recent Harvard grads have used their powers for good to create an online microlending platform for the college students who need money and the alumni who can loan it. Joshua Kushner ‘08, Nimay Mehta ‘09, and Tanuj Parikh ‘09 created UniThrive, a non-profit microlending site specifically for college students. The pilot version went up this spring, and is currently only available to Harvard students and alumni. If all goes well, UniThrive’s founders hope to spread the non-profit goodness to more schools.

UniThrive is a social enterprise startup that connects alumni and students in financial relationships to lower the cost of education. It is an online platform that allows alumni of a specific university to lend, interest-free, to current students at their alma mater to help defray the costs of a college education. Students in need get favorable loan terms and alumni mentors, whereas alumni are given a tangible method to give back to their alma mater. Additionally, the beauty of a multiple-to-one peer-to-peer online lending model is that alumni of all socioeconomic backgrounds can give loans as little as $50, pooling them together to make a big difference.

The concept of microlending makes a lot of sense. If I were an alumna with discretionary income, I’d be much more inclined to lend it to a student of whom I knew something about than just throwing a wad of cash at the black hole of tax-deductible benefactions. As it is, when I give money to my alma mater, I always choose to donate to the financial aid pile, where all monies are applied directly to defray tuition costs for low-income students. Not that I have anything against supporting the school itself, and if I had a million bucks to add a new wing onto the library, I would.

But the whole point of higher learning institutions is to educate people, and by ‘people’ I mean everyone, not just the ones who can afford to learn. I love a gorgeous library as much as (probably more than) the next person, but I’d rather help pay someone’s tuition than make the library more stunning. It’s more direct. Also, you don’t need a million smackers to save the financial ass of a college student. Not yet, anyway.

Further Reading:

I’m Going to Harvard. Will You Sponsor Me?
Microlending Shows Up Stateside
Kiva Brings Microlending Home to U.S. Entrepreneurs in Need
Top 10 Lessons From a Microlending Pioneer

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image credit: Michael Falco for the NY Times)

It’s June, and the air is awash with the distinct scent of college graduates sweating in their rented caps and gowns. Here’s my positive spin on having the bad luck to be a college graduate looking for your first job when no one is hiring: the pressure’s pretty much off. Getting any job will do, which means you won’t have to leap any tall buildings right off the bat. Seriously, your parents will be stoked as long as you don’t end up back in their basement.

Going back to school is always an option. I mentioned previously that research has been done (I do love data) on college grads in the early 1980s who hid out in grad school instead of trying to find a job in a recession, and their future career trajectories and earning potential were in no way harmed.

If you’re sick of school (how is that even possible?) and don’t feel it’s necessary to add to your student loan tab, then by all means get to it and find a job. Here’s some advice (which you’ll be needing).

Further Reading and Resources:

100 Best Lifehack Lists for Recent College Grads
100 Useful Job Search Tools for Recent College Grads
About.com: Job Searching
Found Your Career
Jobs for College Grads and Career Changers
New Resource for Recent College Grads & Entry Level Job Seekers
One Day One Job: Entry Level Jobs for New College Grads
One Day One Internship
Stimulus Jobs for New College Grads
Teach for America Attracts More College Grads
The Best Job Markets for Recent College Grads
Tools for a Tough Market: 100 Resources for College Grads
Why Your College Grad Doesn’t Have a Job Yet…& 10 Things You Can Do to Fix That

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Setting really far over to the side the fact that I think everyone (even the humans I don’t particularly want to hang out, drink coffee, and chat about politics with) is entitled to an affordable college education, here’s a new take on calculating students loan factors. U.S. News and World Report has a piece about the different tools available for students to use for figuring out their potential future earnings and what that might mean vis-á-vis paying back their student loans.

Included in the list of future-salary calculators is the soon-to-be-launched Human Capital Score. It’s in beta right now, and can therefore currently be accessed for free by anyone who’s interested. (Once it’s officially launched, I’m assuming it’ll cost you in some way, shape, or form). Unlike traditional FICO scores, the Human Capital Score figures out a given student’s future ability to pay back the money they borrowed for college using the student’s SAT scores, their high school GPA, their undergraduate major and their undergrad GPA.

It’s interesting in so far as HCS is utilizing a different set of variables when calculating student loan factors. However, while I do appreciate it when the system tries new and exciting approaches to measuring people’s potential, I still tend to take issue with the obsessive need to measure people in the first place, especially when it comes to deciding who deserves how much education based on test scores and possible future earnings. Again with the standardized test scores meaning more than they should and the in-it-for-the-potential-to-do-good careers getting shafted.

Sampling of Salary Calculators:

SalaryExpert.com
Salary Wizard
Glassdoor.com
PayScale.com
National Association of Colleges and Employers (usually free at college career centers)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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