Thanks LivLuv, I really do appreciate the perspective.
And you are right, it does sound like you were given some misleading advice, particularly about what the real-world value of a small private college degree compared to a public-school degree would be. (And when I say "real-world" I pretty much mean employment, period--it would be misleading advice to give to a prospective humanities scholar, as well.) I don't know much about business degrees, so I can't really comment on the value of a business communications concentration (is that what makes it an "arts" degree?) compared to other tracks--other than to say I know there are heated academic debates within fields with a strong technical component (like business) as to the career-prep advisability of promoting more human-relations-oriented concentrations. When I said "broad-based" I wasn't thinking so much in those terms, but rather in terms of a university-wide core curriculum that would ensure everyone gets at least a little exposure to "hard" science, a little exposure to social science, a little exposure to literature or philosophy, etc. I'm not convinced that more discipline-specific, narrow-application-focused versions of these courses yield the same critical-thinking or written/oral communications skills benefits, because I'm just not seeing it in my students. But I'll grant that so far as entry-level resumes go, the distinction is of little interest to most employers--these are benefits that emerge as career performance unfolds; you can't prove them on paper.
I'm sure it is the case that small private colleges try very hard to hold onto their students--state schools feel some of that pressure too, but not nearly as much. And faculty are indeed *often* paid better and get better benefits (
80% percent tution break?!?...wow) at small private colleges, which I suppose might make it harder to sympathize with your students' financial issues; personally, I feel anything but secure and duly compensated, so I don't know. Anyhow, I'm sorry that you were misled, and I hope the choices you made turn up some tangible benefits and job satisfaction for you in the future. You will probably have to leave SW Lower Michigan for that though...which I know you're actively considering.
Angela Harlem said:
So who's right? I reckon there's more than a grain of truth in both. Times have changed tremendously, but has opportunity and availability for the reward for hard work changed with it?
Well "baby boomer" is generally understood to mean someone born 1946-64, so I'm not sure where this leaves us 30-somethings. The idea of working for the same company for 30 years and "climbing the ladder" that way strikes me as largely moot--far fewer companies nowadays do the majority of their promoting from within; I certainly saw this when I worked in retail management in grad school. And low-paying service jobs do comprise a significantly higher proportion of the jobs out there now than they did 30 years ago, while good-paying "unskilled" manufacturing jobs have significantly declined--so it does stand to reason that competition would be fiercer for what's left over. On the other hand, I am inclined to agree that many (not by any means all) younger people, up to and including 30-somethings, often have inflated ideas of how much income they really need (or deserve?), and tend to expect to have two cars, two computers, a home entertainment system, a "nice" house, etc., at a much earlier stage in life than their parents expected those things at. I guess the strong midcentury growth of the middle class, the tendency to wait until later in life to have kids, and the tendency to have smaller families all feed into these perceptions.
But also a lot of recently graduated 20-somethings are simply in very bad straits right now, with mountains of debt to pay off and poor prospects for the kind of job that could enable them to do that on a reasonable timeframe. And when you're desperate, pretty much anything looks way better than what you have--kind of like the way that, even for someone who doesn't have debts, the difference between $15,000 a year versus $20,000 feels enormous in ways that later increases just don't.