Michelle Obama is from the government and she's here to help

[dorminWS]

Michelle Obama Pitches Student Aid: 'Almost Everyone Is Eligible'

Posted on February 7, 2014 by V2A — 5 Comments ↓
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“Almost everyone is eligible for some form of financial aid, and all you have to do to access that aid is fill out this one little form. It’s so simple,” First lady Michelle Obama told students at a suburban Washington high school on Wednesday.
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The form is FAFSA — the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

“[T]hrough FAFSA, the Department of Education provides more than $150 billion every year in low-interest loans, in grants that you don’t have to pay back, and work-study programs that can help cover your educational expenses,” Mrs. Obama said.

She equated higher education with freedom: “With a good education, you can get a job that pays a decent salary or more. You can provide for your family, which is key. And you can become whatever you dream of becoming, which is the kind of freedom that I want all of you to have. And filling out the FAFSA form is one of the first and most important steps you can take in that journey, because … college can be expensive.”

Read more at http://visiontoamerica.com/16762/michel ... IJOtHiy.99
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BUT THE REALITY BEHIND MICHELLE'S PIE-IN-THE-SKY-FREE-COLLEGE-MONEY-IS -YOUR-TICKET-TO-EASY-STREET-AND-IT-GROWS-ON-TREES GRAVY TRAIN IS THIS:

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53% of Recent College Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed—How?
Jordan Weissmann
Apr 23 2012, 3:06 PM ET

A college diploma isn't worth what it used to be. To get hired, grads today need hard skills.
615_Starbucks_Baristas_Reuters.jpg
Reuters

More than half of America's recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in a job that doesn't require a bachelor's degree, the Associated Press reported this weekend. The story would seem to be more evidence that, regardless of your education, the wake of the Great Recession has been a terrible time to be young and hunting for work.

But are we really becoming another Greece or Spain, a wasteland of opportunity for anybody under the age of 25? Not quite. What the new statistics really tell us about is the changing nature, and value, of higher education.

First, here's the nut of the AP's findings, which it derived with the help of researchers from Northeastern University, Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, based on data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and the U.S. Department of Labor:

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

These numbers are hard to fathom, and the more you compare them to other measures of unemployment, the more bizarre they seem. Unfortunately, I don't have all of the data the AP was working with. But their analysis implies that about a quarter of the post-collegiate population is outright unemployed. By comparison, in December 2011, only a fifth of 16 to 19-year-old Americans couldn't get work. Meanwhile, according to the OECD, just 18.4 percent of all Americans under the age of 25 were unemployed in 2010. By those measures, college grads are actually faring worse in the job market than the overall youth population. They're also suffering terribly compared to the older college-educated populace, which has an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.

It's hard to imagine why any of this might be, other than that some recent grads may simply not be willing to take the low level jobs available to them.

On the other hand, many obviously are. As the AP notes, recent graduates are now more likely to work as "waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined." This is a problem for any number of reasons, but here are two big ones: First, a degree is more expensive than ever, and students are piling on debt to finance their educations. It's much harder to pay back loans while working for tips at Buffalo Wild Wings than when you have a decent office job. Second, when college graduates take a low-paid, low-skill job, they're probably displacing a less educated worker, For every underemployed college degree holder, there's a decent chance someone with just a high school diploma is out of work entirely.

So is a college education simply less valuable than in the past? In some respects, yes. According to the Census, the number of Americans under the age of 25 with at least a bachelor's degree has grown 38 percent since 2000. Not nearly enough jobs have been created to accommodate them, which has resulted in falling wages for young college graduates in the past decade, as well as the employment problems we're now seeing.

That said, not all degrees are created equal. The AP reports that students who graduated out of the sciences or other technical fields, such as accounting, were much less likely to be jobless or underemployed than humanities and arts graduates. You know that old saw about how college is just about getting a fancy piece of paper? Not true. For an education to be worth anything these days, it needs to impart skills.

When there were fewer graduates, a generic college degree used to be a valuable credential. Now that the market is flooded, diplomas count less, and specific skills count more. This means that, in many instances, associates and technical degrees may be more financially valuable than a liberal arts degree. After all, some of the fastest growing job categories are expected to be in so-called "middle-skill" positions such as nursing, which do not require a full, four-year education. It's one more sign that, for people seeking to fix America's employment picture, "college for all" is the wrong mantra. We need to be talking about "skills for all" instead.
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Has our country ever been more afflicted with "leaders" who don't have a clue and don't give a sh!t?

[FiremanBob]

Dat's waaassis...

[dorminWS]

Dat's waaassis...

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Seems like the inconvenient truth always is these days, doesn't it?

[jmax]

You get a degree that is easy and let's you party four years you get to not work when you graduate. If you get a degree in areas that require hard work like engineering, science and business there is work. What a surprise.

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[Snakester]

HELP.....somebody put the hinney-lick maneuver on me ......I am chocking on my tongue !

[BertMacklin]

The loans get paid back to the government with interest, the Newly Educated will be pushed into poverty with a combination of debt and shitty jobs, thus creating a new generation which is dependent on the government to not starve.

[dorminWS]

The loans get paid back to the government with interest, the Newly Educated will be pushed into poverty with a combination of debt and shitty jobs, thus creating a new generation which is dependent on the government to not starve.

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...............thus creating a new generation WHICH FEELS ENTITLED TO A PRIVILEGED EXISTENCE, RESENTFUL BECAUSE IT IS UNATTAINABLE WITH THEIR EXPENSIVE BUT USELESS CREDENTIALS, and dependent on the government to not starve.

Of course, all those things will make them solid democrat/progressive voters.

[WRW]

Ah, yes. The occupy movement can then be resurrected to forgive those student loans.

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[762]

I think my overall college degree was both a waste of time and money. B.S. (BS stand for Bullshit, IMO) in aviation systems management. One would think that combined with an A&P I'd be able to find work, but it is REALLY tough out there. Sad part is that jobs don't pay nearly what they should for the amount of responsibility the job entails. I'm seeing ~ $13-15/hr...for that pay (including shift work) I'd rather just work at Costco and get paid close to that with 0 responsibility.

Any job I've had in the past my degrees were not relevant to my employment (it didn't matter if I had them or not), and am unable to find anything after looking for quite some time (nationwide, excepting New England and Kali) leads me to the conclusion that my time in college was a waste.

[SHMIV]

I do find it interesting that I am better off than my educated relatives.

Many of my cousins are cynical and unhappy.

I'm generally happy.

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[Swampman]

Yeah, but if they play their cards right they can get Obamacare subsidies that'll help to not have to worry about working. When they get on the dole, their loans will be forgiven. Win-Win! Free education they'll never use, and free money they will. What could be better in this land of milk and honey?

[Kreutz]

FAFSA gave me a free ride (the GI Bill I pocketed made college a profitable endeavor).

Had about a year of college credit from CLEP tests the Army paid for (saved me a lot of time and thus money), got a quick associates in a related field, then got my BS in three years and had a job in my field before I graduated and now work for myself making decent $.

Again, this costed me no money.

College is what you put into it-same as anything else. I studied (was often the only white person in the library doing this-everyone else was Indian/East Asian) and approached my internships with professionalism.

If I can do it, anyone can.

[mamabearCali]

I am starting to feel like we need to carry a crucifix, holy water and wear garlic. Our govt is looking for ever more creative ways to suck us dry.

On college....it is great if you need it and are diligent in your studies. It is not so great if you are studying 18th century poetry and expecting to land a 60k a year job.

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[MarcSpaz]

FAFSA is a joke. My daughter is a legal adult, has a job and basically doing her own thing. She can't qualify for anything under FAFSA because she is under 26, so they are looking at my income... and I make way to much for her to get anything. Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. Just because I am well off, that doesn't mean my adult offspring has any money.

Se wants to be an FBI Profiler and without post doctorate education in a related field and a decade of experience, they won't even look at her. I don't want to see my kid burdened with student loans that will take 20 years for her to pay back. So, now I am paying cash for her college tuition.

[Swampman]

Good on ya Marc! Both my daughters will graduate with no tuition debt. We applied to FAFSA, and it is a huge joke. Kreutz is the exception rather than the rule. FAFSA is a way for the Education Dept. to collect information on hardworking families. We just made out last ever tuition payment in early January.

Now, since we've been paying tuition, we have to start throwing money at our retirement. Swimming upstream isn't for sissies.

[Kreutz]

I was a veteran (at age 19 lol) when I filled out the FAFSA so I was legally "independent" and only my own (very meager) assets were counted; hence I got a free ride.

They didn't count my monthly stipend from the GI bill as income either, so I just pocketed that. Took a nice three week European trip with a lady friend with some of the money at one point.

I wanted to go into healthcare so I figured I'd get an associates in business administration (since healthcare is a business as many seem to forget) and a bachelors in health information management, a small but rapidly growing field.

One of these years I may pursue a masters but the cost, time investment, and possible poor return on investment are a major deterrent.