Wall Street to Walmart

Caroline, 22 years old and a recent University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) graduate, has just entered the realm of the job market. Young and optimistic, she has high hopes of becoming an accountant or a financial adviser because as she understood it, if one obtained a business degree one was guaranteed a decent paying job right out of college. Coming from a middle class family, Caroline received minimal financial aid every semester. Her parents supported her as much as they could, but with tuition being right around $30,000/year, she had no other choice but to take out loans. Caroline’s fresh excitement of being a college graduate in the working world soon disintegrated upon the realization of just how much debt she had accumulated during her 4 years at U of I. On top of that she had only received 8 call backs for an interview out of the 50 jobs she had applied for and was over qualified for. Out of angst and frustration, Caroline ended up moving back home with her mom and dad, taking a managerial position at their local Wal-Mart.

I have drawn out a fake or not so fake scenario above of what appears to be becoming a more and more common trend among today’s college graduates. John Schmitt, a labor economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington noted that among 22-year-old degree holders who found jobs in the past three years, more than half were in roles not requiring a college diploma (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-05/college-graduates-struggle-to-find-employment-worth-a-degree.html) . This is extremely frustrating to myself because I will be graduating within the next seven months and already see the financial hardships that lie ahead of me. So folks, what exactly is going on with America’s college graduates?

Ever since we were old enough to understand the concept of education, we were taught that in order to be financially stable and successful, we had to obtain a college degree. This may have been true 15 years ago before the economy completely went to the shitter, but in the year 2014 having a Bachelor’s degree does not guarantee a person a job and most definitely does not guarantee financial stability. In fact, I would almost go to the lengths to argue that obtaining a college degree does the very opposite of that today.

Neoliberalism is basically a new form of capitalism which emphasizes free trade and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of private sectors in the economy. With this new form of economic policy, public education takes a huge hit. The privatization of education not only forces students to pay an arm and a leg to attend an acquitted university in hopes of one day working for a viable salary, but also creates a substantial gap in the quality of education amongst the private and public universities. Only the rich and families with educational connections have the money to send their children to the best of universities, such as Harvard, Cornell, etc. where a lot more is expected out of the students and the professors and your attendance is only desirable if you have the money to pay for it.

Meanwhile, someone from the middle/lower class (because let’s face it middle and lower class are one in the same now) does not have the opportunity or financial status to attend a college of such a high stature.  They then attend a state school where they still seem to be paying an arm and a leg, but only for a mediocre education.  This is an issue because after college graduation you enter the real world with a bunch of debt and many times cannot even find a job in your field of study to start paying it off. You’re indebted and the only thing you have to show for it is a measly piece of paper reading “Bachelor of such and such” that cannot even land you a job.

Over the past few weeks I have heard a lot of “The system is broken” in many different contexts which I totally agree that the so called system is fucked up, however it is not broken. Our capitalistic system is functioning in the very way that it is supposed to. Once again, ever since we were little we were told that if we work hard we could advance and prosper with our careers and economic status. However, due to the privatization of education, among other things, it is merely functioning in a way to support the rich and shit on the poor. Capitalism stresses the idea that anyone can be successful and advance professionally with dedication and hard work, but truth be told in order to even enter the dugout of the playing field, money is required. Our system is not designed to support the success of everyone; it is designed to support the success of a few and the failures of the rest.

This type of system makes it significantly more difficult for a person to rise above their raisings and realistically is not sustainable because eventually the lower middle class will not be able to thrive at all in today’s economy. Many people remain at the same economic class as their parents, yet we still are taught that our system is designed for anyone to succeed if they have a good work ethic. So many people want to try and get out of that cycle of poverty yet when they do something to try and change that such as going to college, it’s almost like they take one step forward and two steps back. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to dissuade someone from going to college, I am however, encouraging people to be aware of what is exactly happening in America today, and to not necessarily label every factor as “good or bad” but to see the intended and unintended consequences of the system in which America was built upon.