Psst, freshmen! Are you feeling stressed? You're not alone: a survey revealed that this year's incoming students are the most stressed in 25 years. The economy, it seems, is to blame:
Link“Students know their generation is likely to be less successful than their parents’, so they feel more pressure to succeed than in the past,” said Jason Ebbeling, director of residential education at Southern Oregon University. “These days, students worry that even with a college degree they won’t find a job that pays more than minimum wage, so even at 15 or 16 they’re thinking they’ll need to get into an M.B.A. program or Ph.D. program.”
Other findings in the survey underscore the degree to which the economy is weighing on college students.
“Paternal unemployment is at the highest level since we started measuring,” said John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A.’s Higher Education Research Institute, which does the annual freshman survey. “More students are taking out loans. And we’re seeing the impact of not being able to get a summer job, and the importance of financial aid in choosing which college they’re going to attend.”
“We don’t know exactly why students’ emotional health is declining,” he said. “But it seems the economy could be a lot of it.”
I do know that every student in my class (it's a small school; 28 graduating thesis students) has been jarred financially and several are worried if they will even get to graduate because of tuition increases and financial aid decreases.
It is both sad and emotionally taxing to see people close to giving up midway through the year because they see no hope in being able to afford to get their degree. And at my school, you can't take off a semester in the thesis year and come back. You have to complete the final year all in one go or you have to redo your entire senior year.
I cross my fingers that the general populous isn't as lost and hopeless as my peers. What started as a spark of hope 3 years ago has become so expensive that it is a hole of depression. And even those who aren't affected by the economy are close enough to their peers where everyone is feeling the stress for their comrades. (What can I say? A tiny college gets super close over the years.)
Sorry this was long. It just means a lot to me, and those around me right now, and we're all just trying to reach our collective goals without losing our sanity.
Cost of living is increasing, tuition is increasing, insurance is ridiculous, and what people are requiring for what used to be relatively simple jobs are making it harder and harder to get where you need to be.
I work at the mall and it is depressing because I worked so hard there to put myself through school and now I feel like a B.S. is not going to get me even and entry level job, and I can't afford Grad school.
I know I can't be the only one who sees this as a vicious pattern that is a product of a desperate society.
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College students are working less hard, it seems
Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks report:
Using multiple datasets from different time periods, we document declines in academic time investment by full-time college students in the United States between 1961 and 2003. Full-time students allocated 40 hours per week toward class and studying in 1961, whereas by 2003 they were investing about 27 hours per week. Declines were extremely broad-based, and are not easily accounted for by framing effects, work or major choices, or compositional changes in students or schools. We conclude that there have been substantial changes over time in the quantity or manner of human capital production on college campuses.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15954#fromrss
College is so watered down these days it's hard to imagine a turnip being stressed at taking a full course of Freshmen studies, let alone a person with what used to pass for an average IQ.
but with college, its turning into a waste of time in this country. adding stress to a degree is the fact that jobs are leaving this country, FAST. companies are cutting back and saving cash, all entirely due to an uncertain economic future set by laws and regulations made by washington in the last 4 years. since the bailouts under bush the government has voided Private civilian contracts and they continue to do it to this day. wait for the majority of obamacare regulations to hit in 2013. companies can not print money like the government, so they are saving for future regulations, taxes, and costs associated with trade, building, and maitnence.
believe it or not, american companies are sitting on more cash than at any other point in our history, cold hard money that will not move one inch until they know theirs and their own are taken care of.
now, you can see this in one of two ways, either A) you believe that if the government took that money, it can spend it better than they can and we will have prosperity again.
or B) you understand that people look out for their own self interests, and that the money will be used when the regulations, taxes, and cost of government go down.
as for college students, here is a commencement speach made in 2010 for the future of our country, great stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83P11kZuMtQ