Millennials.... the whingy self-absorbed lazy entitled snowflakes who won't stop playing with their phones, but who simultaneously need to just lighten up, party more, worry less, stop to smell the roses, aimlessly screw around, and you know,
find themselves, like their parents did - the generation that, in order to indulge its tax avoidance, pensions, and credit card debt, presided over successive financial crashes, the tripling of tuition fees, the effective end of home-ownership, a return to Victorian-era wealth distribution, sanctimonious and punitive benefit cuts, the end of european employment prospects, looming environmental catastrophe, and the general imposition of a neo-liberal hellscape of zero-hours contracts and working poverty, where, like sharks, we'll all die the instant we stop moving.
millennials. what's
wrong with them?
one Financial Times dad investigates:
Picking a university? All rather challenging
https://www.ft.com/content/3a4f3a0c-2487-11e7-a34a-538b4cb30025
"The boy, however, seems strangely interested in patently extraneous matters such as the quality of the course. Discussing options the other day, I mentioned one well-regarded institution he had left off his list. “They haven’t got a very good reputation for history,” he replied.
This interest in the detail of the degree is no doubt admirable but it is quite a departure from my era. A big-name lecturer was definitely a draw, but not as much as a banging social scene. It would be wrong to say I paid no attention to a university’s reputation. I researched it studiously with classmates. “Birmingham — no one rates it,” said a friend, almost certainly on the basis of how the football team was placed in the league at the time. And that was it, Birmingham was off the list. This was what passed for research. Liverpool, by contrast, was known to be well cool, and so was rewarded with one of my five choices. I did not go there in the end but it will have been a comfort to them to know they were favourably considered.
Naturally, we have tried to put him right, steering him away from all those websites that rate universities by such measures as the quality of their teaching or the number of individual tutorial hours. We have, forlornly it seems, stressed the important metrics such as the number of nightclubs and the presence of a really bad football team that he can support in later years as a sign of his integrity and emotional depth. But the boy is actually looking at the courses. I blame tuition fees. If you are going to end up at least £30,000 in debt, I suppose you might as well take an interest in your studies, though it seems a terrible inversion of priorities.
His active interest is also a function of the personal statement all students are now required to write to support their application, which needs to demonstrate real passion for the subject. He is not wrong, of course. When his parents were applying, about 10 per cent of school students went to university. The mere fact of a degree was enough to guarantee you a decent job. Now the rate is 50 per cent and no such certainty applies. Aside from those studying for a vocation such as medicine, college has always seemed more about falling in love and getting ready for life than about educational achievement. Today’s students are facing a tougher job market than ever and a life with far fewer guarantees than their parents. When you put it like that, the boy is right. This is indeed preparation for the life to come."
cheers for that, dad!
