What's the idea behind that "Submit a Story" uncollapsible floating tab on the left side of the page? Seems like you're obstructing a pretty important, content-dense part of the screen with something unimportant and obnoxious that doesn't even generate revenue. Please reconsider this design.
EDIT: It's come to my attention that this only appears to be an issue at 1024x768, which I'm currently using because I'm at work and my employer's computer hardware is ancient. This is probably not a problem for the typical user.
Great post - really brilliant tactical thinking, and it's always a delight to see smart moves pay off.
I feel like it should be noted that it's quite dangerous to threaten a move like this unless you're actually prepared to follow through with it if the gambit fails. If this move hadn't worked and the prospect had responded with something like "please reconsider, we believe there is still a good chance things can work out," I think it would have been disastrous for this company's credibility going forward if they had actually continued working on this prospect. Part of the reason this was a great move for them in this situation is that they were legitimately ready to cut their losses with this prospect and move on. When that's the case, even the smallest chance of jamming a sale through is pure value over their best alternative.
Assuming you're referring to Marie's scolding of Megan, I think the quote is closer to "Not every little girl gets to do what she wants - the world could not support that many ballerinas." Which is even closer to what this article is saying.
I think the OP's characterization of the decisionmaking process that leads to crippling educational debt is somewhat unfair. It's definitely driven by the parents and children who he condemns as "clueless." But I think it's important to consider that many of these "clueless" have been told their entire lives that "education is a great investment" and "graduates of prestigious universities all become successful and rich," and have never really been confronted with any reason to question these pronouncements, which have appeared consistent with their own observations and experiences. Colleges and universities don't hesitate to trot out these tropes in their recruitment literature, though I suppose it's a mark of the "clueless" that they hold educational institutions to a different standard of credibility than used car salesmen or carnival barkers.
I see a parallel to the recent mortgage crisis. Sure, fundamentally, the crisis was just huge numbers of people defaulting en-masse on their mortgages. They all made "clueless" decisions by taking on more mortgage debt than they could handle. Maybe they deserve what they get, and maybe the appropriate response is to be angry at these entitled whiners who made worse decisions than the OP. But these decisions were facilitated by lenders and securities brokers who were acting in less than good faith.
I'm inclined to view both the homeowners in the mortgage crisis and the students and families struggling with education debt right now more as victims of poor information availability and outmoded decision heuristics that fell behind the times, and less as entitled whiners.
I guess I should note that I also went to the University of Chicago (hi Jesse) and it's fairly clear by now that it was a terrible choice for me. So maybe I'm just grasping for rationalizations while desperately fleeing from the crushing psychological weight of the responsibility for that choice and the long and uninterrupted sequence of related bad choices that have more or less ruined my life.
Can't really tell if the last line is sarcasm for sure (I think it is?).
I can't stand when people are taught to listen instead of think, and that predilection of mine is why I can't see the sub-prime mortgage crisis as being at all similar to college debt.
Someone who is going to college is supposed to be bright, intelligent, and motivated. A budding critical thinker who can deal with new and complex ideas. Hence I don't think someone who makes decisions based on what they're told is a good candidate for college. Likewise I don't think someone who is focused on the past success of others is exactly an ideal college candidate, either. Both of these things are ostensibly why there are large essay sections as part of the college application process.
In any case, I think it's kind of disingenuous and silly to have the same expectations of someone without a high school degree and three kids working 60 hours a week getting pitched on a bad loan and a top end of the spectrum student getting pitched on colleges. You can't have the same expectations.
That said, I think you hit the nail on the head when comparing modern college recruitment practices to used car salesmen. In fact, visiting MIT (academic activity related) remains one of the most disillusioning experiences of my life. Sure, science goes on there, but I felt like I was inside of an infomercial.
If anything perhaps both are a sign that K-12 needs to have more coverage of financial- and media- literacy.
But I guess I've regarded the success of graduates of Ivy Leagues and other prestigious schools as having more to do with being part of the good old boys club and networking with the wealthy than actually having anything to do with having good teachers.
No sarcasm; just a lot of regret and self-loathing.
It seems like the root of our disagreement is our differeing expectations for the cognitive and decisionmaking abilities of teenagers. As other posters have mentioned, there are lots of social factors at play in the college decision, and I think those factors can be far more powerful than what's necessary to lead a straight-A high school student astray.
If we pared away all of the people who were susceptible to making bad decisions based on what they're told or who are focused on the past successes of others, only the tiniest sliver of the population would remain as viable candidates for college. Maybe this is the point you're making - maybe you think we should shut down almost every university and tell everyone outside the enlightened sliver to go figure out something else to do. (Might actually not be that bad of an idea.) Or maybe you have a different view of people's cognitive abilities at age 17.
The approach that you personally took toward your college decision is, I think, pretty exceptional, and puts you toward the top of the top 1% of rational 17-year-old decisionmakers. I hesitate to condemn people as clueless and undeserving of our sympathy because they fall short of that lofty standard.
I agree there are large structural flaws with college (well, pretty much the whole educational system). Good teachers and good researchers aren't the same thing for sure. Likewise, many amenities at college today are not really necessary, but also likely don't have a anywhere near an order of magnitude impact on costs. At some schools healthy food is often replaced by junk food provided through restaurant contractors, which is not so great, but maybe is a little cheaper. I agree that something needs to change with how college works, and that the costs are getting a bit silly when they're almost at the point that you could get together with a class of friends and hire expert personal tutors instead.
Likewise, I definitely think that many people who feel they need to go to college are people who shouldn't go to college, or who at least aren't ready for it. Witness the huge numbers of remedial courses at many public institutions, as well as decreasing standards in many courses. I sometimes take classes at the local community college for fun and I'll have classmates who can barely read and write using student loans to fail their courses. Sadly enough, I've seen some of the same at 4 year schools. It's just depressing and I often wonder how they even got through High School. (And I'm not talking about non-English speakers or anything, either. Upper or upper-middle class Caucasians who have maybe 5th or 6th grade level language skills.)
Of course some people just eat McDonald's and play WoW instead of going to class while living off loans. I had a room mate one year in the dorms who did that.
I'm sure you're right that social pressure is a lot of it. Dad goes to college, assumes the kids will too, then doesn't much pay attention while they do rather mediocre in school, aren't ready for college, but absolutely feel like they've got to. So on and so forth.
I can't accept the notion that social pressure is really a valid excuse, though, even if it's behind the reality for some of the problems.
But I'm the kind of cruel bastard who hates it when people worry about what everyone else thinks and who if ever has kids will move several times on purpose and keep them from watching TV and hopefully raise them so that they can trust themselves instead of their peers with lots of comments like 'well, if Freddy jumped off a cliff would you?.'
I've also got to think another part of it is the notion that the credential is meaningful, but doesn't represent any skill or knowledge. So many people these days think of the paper first, the socialization second, and learning third.
I'm sure there's something, too, with the excessive helicopter parenting keeping even smart 17/18-year-olds from really thinking for themselves.
I guess I'm just not super sympathetic about things that irritate me, and my experiences have rarely exposed me to the sympathetic side.
One thing I just thought about is ROTC. Better than debt, I guess? The people I knew in it were definitely on the straight and narrow and all set to finish with decent grades and no debt.
I mostly have a problem with the people for whom it CLEARLY was a bad decision and they continually try to insist that it was a good one when it clearly did not work out at all for them. Such unwillingness to think rationally about poor decisions only makes it all the more easy for these ridiculous tuition hikes and loan schemes to continue.
The reasonable people (like you seem to be) who have their regrets along with their debts have my sympathy. I hope that things manage to improve for you someday. :(
To generalize from this very good point - perhaps a future iteration should include a fully-blinged-out "Advanced" settings menu that lets you add constraints for a wide variety of dietary restrictions, including micronutrient requirements, food allergies, and various modes of vegetarianism.
I exercise a lot -ish, with the goal of increasing my lean weight.
I need the carbs for energy so I can train, think and not sleep a lot. Because next to training, I also keep a somewhat busy freelancing schedule.
I need the protein for building muscle mass.
And I need the fat because fat burns in fat and you can't get leaner without consuming fat.
The idea is that you can't digest more than X amount of protein per day anyway (so 20% seems okay), you want fat, but too much fat will amke you fat (so 20% seems okay) and 60% carbs is pretty much what's left.
My biggest problem right now is that I don't eat enough carbs, but do eat too much fat. Protein is going pretty well.
Because here's the tricky part, once you let go of simple carbs (white flour, processed sugar etc.) it becomes really really really difficult to eat enough carbs. And a lot if not most of high protein foods (especially animal protein) are also high in fat.
For instance, an egg is something like 33% protein, 63% fat and 3% carbs.
My exact thoughts. There has been more than one occasion that I have found good resources on about.com. However, I don't think I can say the same for answers.com. Half the time I run across a page on it, there is no answer just the question. I got so tired of it I blocked it from all my Google search results. It's also filled with so many ads you can hardly find any information on it.
Still baffled by how answers.com expects to get $270M of financing to buy about.com. To anyone who has ever clicked a link to either of those domains from a Google query, the headline must seem Onion-like.
I remember having this same thought when I learned about the existence of "Islamic finance." Apparently, Islam has a strong doctrinal prohibition against charging interest, and there's an entire thriving sector of Islamic law and business dedicated to structuring transactions in ways that don't technically charge interest but still yield a return on principal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
This reminds me of a little kid beating up his classmates on the playground being told by the playground monitor to stop touching them, and then turning around going back to tormenting them by starting to punch them and stopping just short of making actual contact, and saying "neener neener, I'm not actually touching you." Except here, instead of a playground monitor, it's...an omnipotent creator deity.
My understanding is that a generous portion of Rabbinic legal theory is about tapdancing around the Mosaic law.
Because most observant jews would not, I can only assume, want their children to be stoned to death for giving them a bit of cheek. Or have to be beaten up because they shaved. And so on.
What strikes me odd about biblical law is how little of it is devoted to elucidating the big questions. Such as: what about the corner cases to the Ten Commandments? Is killing in a war forbidden? What about self-defence? And so on.
Islamic finance is a fairly complicated subject. As someone who has no background in finance, I have been trying to understand some basics.
But overall, what I understand is that for a bank to give out loans, they must also provide every opportunity to help those who are borrowing money.
For example, they can extend the payment, provide advice etc
The main thing about Islamic finance is that it is all asset based. You can take a loan to buy a car, but you can't take a loan to renovate a house etc. This is to stop people from borrowing when they can't possibly pay back.
There are few models for unsecured loans. But, as I said, its very complicated.
EDIT: It's come to my attention that this only appears to be an issue at 1024x768, which I'm currently using because I'm at work and my employer's computer hardware is ancient. This is probably not a problem for the typical user.