It’s a tough economy out there.  Everywhere you look, people are making cutbacks or people are not hiring.  So you have to have some sympathy for new college graduates like Trina Thompson.  She matriculated at Monroe College in the hopes of landing a job thanks to the school’s good reputation and placement program.  However, after being jobless since April, she feels lied to and has sued the school to get her $70,000 in tuition back.

Lawsuits are rarely the answer, no matter how extreme the case, and this is no exception.  Hopefully, the judge will toss this case out before the ink dries on the paperwork.  That said, I can definitely understand her frustration, and she’s not the first person to consider a lawsuit.

For one thing, my generation (she and I are the same age) has been lied to since birth.  We’ve been told that the key to a good job is college.  You go, you learn, and you leave school and move right into the professional world.  You’ll make more money, you’ll be a big success, and your college experience will have been a benefit.  That’s simply not true.

You might make more money in the long run, and depending on your field you might start out better than you would as a high school graduate, but in most places?  You start at the bottom.   Even worse, you start out with crippling amounts of debt that you wouldn’t have had if you had just jumped right into the workforce 10 years previously, and a newly-discovered sense of disillusionment thanks to reality smashing your dreams of being an architect or IT drone.  The few pennies extra you bring in thanks to your education is offset by the 10 (or 20, or even 30) years of loans.

I’m not saying that college won’t be worth it eventually.  Maybe it will be.  But college isn’t a golden ticket to success.  Especially if you major in something you like (like I did) rather than major in something that will pay well (like Trina did).  It’s time to stop pretending that a college education means anything these days; college is the new high school, except way more expensive.

Tags: Monroe College, New York City, jobless woman sues college, Trina Thompson, unusual lawsuits

Patty Clement’s 11-year-old daughter had a problem with one of her teachers.  It appears that Rex Roland, an educator at Enka Middle School in Buncombe County in Asheville, North Carolina, had issues with her daughter.  That’s the best explanation as to why he wrote that she was a loser on her paper not once, but […]

There’s a condition unique to the human condition called default bias.  Generally, when presented with two options, the default option and a different option, most people choose the default.  Even when it’s wrong, this dithering tends to go to the default choice.  That’s why people stare blankly at hundreds of channels, then just stay with […]

As the Elvis estate could tell you, being dead is a great business deal.  Michael Jackson’s estate is living proof of that, as his heirs, controllers, and various business managers have negotiated the biggest record deal in history for the singer, who died only 9 months ago in mid-preparation for a string of comeback concerts. […]

It’s no secret that the Internet has changed how we do everything since it took hold of the world.  There’s a reason that improving the Internet is one of the FCC’s top goals.  That’s not hyperbole; from shopping to music, reading to communication, the Internet has changed everything and here are the 15 websites responsible […]

Actually, it’s not just perfume.  City workers at three different buildings in Detroit are banned from using or wearing the following:  “colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions … (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners.”  This is part of a settlement agreement between the city and […]

While Buzz Aldrin has landed a good career post-space flight by landing on Dancing With The Stars, and John Glenn was in Congress between stints as the first man to orbit the earth and the oldest astronaut, respectively, not all astronauts are so lucky. It’s a tight job market, which is why Bigelow Aerospace is […]

If you’ve ever had a rough day, stumbled home after a bad commute, and immediately been snuggled up to by a pet, you’re not alone.  The benefits of pet ownership on emotional well being are well known, but not as well known are just how valuable those relationships are to the pet owners.  Dogs are […]