Categories
Business Career Engagement Entrepreneurship Future of Work Generation Y Income Inequality Innovation Workplace

On the Rules No One Else is Playing By

The American Dream speaks the language of ambition and its tongue whispers it is not for lack of luck, but lack of effort that you are a failure. Put in the work and you’ll become a success. Luck nor social constructs or randomness or the genetic lottery create the richest men of the world – and they are men – but an exchange of value. The rules are: work hard and be rewarded in return. Except we know that’s not true.

“The U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon,” reports former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. “The 400 wealthiest Americans own as much wealth as 80 million families – 62% of America. The reason is the stock market. Since 1980 the American GDP has approximately doubled. Inflation-adjusted wages have gone down. But the stock market has increased by over ten times, and the richest quintile of Americans owns 93% of it.” 

This quintile, they don’t work hard – they don’t work at all – and are rewarded in return. They don’t work hard and amass influence. They don’t work hard and acclaim power. They don’t work hard, and yet millions try to emulate them. Those millions do work hard, and in systems and institutions with large trompe l’oeil ceilings of the sky. That is the American Dream. The illusion creates hope. But we no longer have hope.

“More and more I get the sense that we’ve lost it,” argues New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, “and by ‘it’ I mean the optimism that was always the lifeblood of this luminous experiment, the ambition that has been its foundation, the swagger that made us so envied and emulated and reviled.”

We hit the faux-hope ceiling and facing reality has been unseemly ever since. No one likes work. Bosses are crappy. No, really, really bad. Most bully to cover their own insecurities. Workers never feel appreciated. And none of us are really sure what we’re doing matters anyway. Whatever the job, you’re expected to show up and know the job, not learn the job, not make mistakes or take risks.

A mere 13% of workers are engaged. But unlike the days of the company man, where you could put in your time no matter how boring or rote it became, then retire after 30 years with a pension, today’s employers rid themselves of such responsibility. The loss of loyalty not only means the loss of security, but the deep and meaningful work that comes with dedication and duty.

“The world’s leaders have coolly, calmly, rationally, senselessly decided that bankers, CEOs, lobbyists, billionaires, the astrologers formerly known as economists, corporate ‘people’, robots, and hedge funds are worth more to society than… the young. The world’s leaders are letting the future crash and burn,” argues Umair Haque in the Harvard Business Review. Our youth “is getting a deal so raw that no one but a politician or a serial killer could offer it with a straight face. So let’s call it what it is. Not just unfair—but unconscionable.”

In such demanding and depressing times comes innovation, and it tells us to pour our resources and energy into entrepreneurship. Become a freelancer. Work on the side. Explore your “freedom.” And companies love it. Your corporate sovereignty means no salary, no pension, no retirement plan, no healthcare, no 8-hour work day (you willingly work more), no boundaries, no stability, no safety, and no fealty.

And with everyone out for themselves, there is something more immediate lost than the safeguards of our future; we trick ourselves into believing we’re changing the world. No matter the bills aren’t being paid or we can’t get up in the morning or retirement won’t exist when we reach 60, 70 or 80 years old.

We hold onto the idea that “money isn’t meaning,” and that’s a pretty story. It comforts us while we filter photographs or swipe credit cards for a new pair of hiking boots. But the more we encourage such misleading mindsets, the more off-kilter and out-of-balance not only our economy, but our personal lives will become. Money has always been an exchange of value, and it’s only recently that money has been an indicator of meta non-value.

What I mean is the wealthy don’t acquire money through an exchange of value, but an abstraction of money at a higher and higher level. Take a look at Appaloosa, a hedge fund that employs 250 people and Apple, a company that employs about 35,000 people and earned around $6 billion in 2009. “Appaloosa, the hedge fund, earned about as much as Apple in 2009 by speculating on… well, we don’t really know,” argues former Seventh Generation CEO Jeffrey Hollender.

Now tell me our ignorance and unwillingness to fight doesn’t have something to do with the tradeoff between money and meaning. Money isn’t evil. Only the systems we’ve designed and encouraged to make it so. We keep following the rules no one else plays by, but expect the same result. When it doesn’t happen, we create worth and are happy if someone “likes” it on Instagram.

But your value is worth more than that. It’s worth more than massive debt, overwhelming anxiety, being underchallenged, underemployed or unemployed. It’s worth more than what’s in your bank account and it’s certainly worth more than what you’re getting paid (despite any lies the Microsoft CEO will tell you).

Want to fix the economy? What — too big? How about your life? Want a fair shot at the American Dream? Or just a better boss? Or maybe a chance to just give your kids something, if you can’t give them everything? Want to fix the wanting, the feeling, the gnawing? We have to align worth and wealth.

Categories
Generation Y Knowing yourself Love What You Do

All the Things I Did Last Year

I like to wait until everyone else publishes their New Year’s resolutions, goals and non-resolutions and then publish mine. I want to know I’m not missing out on anything. And, I want to process everything.

So first, accomplishments from 2013. I got engaged, which was quite the celebration; kind of like being welcomed into a club I didn’t know existed: “You’re getting married! You’re one of us now!” I didn’t really get the mania, nor did I understand the constant questions of “When is the wedding?” It is the next logical question to ask, but very rarely have I imagined my wedding and more often I have imagined a non-wedding. (Also, weddings are too freaking expensive. Marriage is not an industry, folks.)

Rebecca Thorman
Right after Ryan got down on one knee.

Besides getting engaged, Ryan and I also celebrated five years together. This seemed like a much bigger achievement. We met six or seven years ago through blogging. Ryan was writing Employee Evolution, the blog that started his company Brazen Careerist, and I used to comment on his blog and tell him how wrong he was. In fact, I was inspired to start my blog because I felt like I had more to add to the conversation. He wasn’t phased, and true to his character, he was the second person to comment on my blog. That’s how he is: no grudges, doesn’t take anything personally. We have good conversations. I like to say I fell in love with his mind before I ever met him, but it doesn’t hurt that he’s also super good looking.

Other things that happened last year: I quit a job I hated with every particle in my being. I hated it so much that I became indifferent, which is the worst kind of hate. It’s like the gasoline slowly leaked out of my tank, and then hit empty, and then went past the reserves, until I’m sitting in a coffee shop with my nice boss (not the reason I hated my job) and the words “I quit” just slipped out. There was nothing else to say.*

(*Okay, there was a lot to say, but I said it all to a coach. Which was another big thing for me in 2013. Asking for help.)

I have a list of “Successes in 2013,” and at the very top, above anything else is “Quit a job I hated.” So this was a big deal. I decided I was worth more.

Rebecca Thorman
Getting excited at Google.

I spoke on a panel at Google in 2013, which was particularly awesome because I was on the panel with really important people, and when it was time for the Q&A, I prepared myself for all the questions to be directed at these really important people. Instead, the first person directed her question toward me, and she said she read my blog. And then the second person, her question was for me too, and she read my blog too. And so on and so forth. And it was joyous. Because sometimes, even with all the comments and the likes and tweets, it’s hard out here for a blogger, and people were telling me they liked me, face-to-face. AT GOOGLE. It’s something I will never forget. Thank you to everyone who tells someone else nice things. You are good people.

The Washingtonian named me a Tech Titan in 2013, for leading the DC Lean Startup meetup where we’ve built an amazing learning community. And while sometimes I think maybe it was a situation where the editors said, “Dang! There are not enough women on this list; are there ANY other women in tech?” I am still really proud of myself. Particularly because the Lean Startup meetup is what gave me my footing in DC. When Ryan and I moved to DC, I was a fish out of water, lonely working from home for my old job back in Madison, and depressed. The world was bigger than I had led myself to believe, and I was much, much smaller. Finally, I got off my “woe is me” butt, and attended the meetup, spoke at the meetup, and then started volunteering to help organize the meetup. It was through the meetup that I built my network, a community, and my own little interesting corner of the city.

Climbing a mountain.

What else? I climbed a mountain. I spent a lot more time outside. I spent a lot more time exercising and moving. I caught up with family. I turned 30. I feel 27. I keep all my old driver’s licenses and my first driver’s license lists my weight as 130 lbs, and I still weigh 130 lbs. I am damn proud of that. So yes, like the weather: 30, feels like 27. Or 16. The older I get, the more I realize what a goofball I am, and why-does-everyone-have-to-be-so-serious-all-the-time. And me, I don’t have to be so serious all the time.

On that note, I learned to let go in 2013. Of people who suck, and people who are not very nice people. I ran out of gas here too, first putting energy into trying to make certain people like me, and then, just like that, all the energy was gone and I was done. Turns out indifference is a useful therapy for not only expunging dreadful jobs, but also dreadful people.

I am happier. Or wait, I don’t like that term. And I don’t like happy people. I have found more peace. 2013 was the year of finding peace, coming to terms with myself, and my head, which is an awful place to live. Now I live in my lungs, where I breath. Life is two sides of a coin, happy and sad, good and bad, and you can never separate the two from one another. When happy comes, I learn to recognize it and I say, “Oh, this is nice, and it will pass.” When bad comes, I learn to recognize it and I say, “Oh, this is not-so-nice, and it too will pass.”

The last quarter of 2013, I got a new job, after taking a break from all the jobs, and it is good. Really good. And I have a good feeling about 2014. Last year, I tore down what wasn’t working; this year I’m looking forward to building things back up.

Categories
Generation Y Start-ups

Who’s the Riskiest Generation of Them All? Not Gen Y

While Gen Y is known as the most entrepreneurial generation in the media, their reality is quite different. Over at US News and World Report today, I share why, instead of opting out of corporate life, young people have opted out of risk. Read it here.

Categories
Generation Y Happiness Knowing yourself Love What You Do Notebook Self-management

It’s (Not) Okay to Fail

Generation Y does not need permission to fail. We got medals and ribbons for that very reason as kids. Gen Y normalized failure. Failure is not scary. It means you get to stay in the status quo, which most of us are very comfortable in. You get to keep being who you are, and that isn’t all bad.

It’s success – that’s scary. Indeed, we’re not changing stuff up because we’re afraid to fail, but afraid to succeed. We need to let people know, “It’s okay to succeed.”

Part of the reason we are so obsessed with normalizing failure is that we want to feel good about ourselves. And that’s hard right now, no doubt. It’s hard to find a job, to get out of debt, to pursue meaningful work. It’s hard to make time for family, get away from our computers, and engage face-to-face. It’s hard not to compare our bottoms to everyone’s top on Facebook.

So, we embrace failure. In its call for speakers, the Dare Conference says, “If you’re willing to be vulnerable, admit your failures, and share what you learned from them, we want to hear from you.” Apparently people aren’t doing that enough on the Internet?

So, we court failure. This guy goes around trying to get rejected on a daily basis. He intentionally tries to fail as if that’s an accomplishment.

So, we sleep with failure. We dream of failure. We live with failure — as a point of pride.

I don’t want to fail. Failure is boring. Failure usually means you didn’t try something; you didn’t follow through; you didn’t finish. Most people don’t really fail. They succeed at being lazy, and call it failure. But at least they tried. Er, right?

Lazy is not failure, it’s just lazy. Practice moderation, instead of binging on inspiration. Practice patience, instead of quick wins.  Start something, but then finish it.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the modern web browser, Netscape and leading venture capitalist, said pivots used to be called fuck-ups and begged for the startup community to put a little more stigma back into failure.

“We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure,” Andreessen said. “You don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma. The entrepreneurs I admire — I admire the ones who pivot but I really admire the ones who have persisted.”

Persist. It’s okay to succeed.

Categories
Accountability Earn More Find a side job Generation Y Love What You Do

How to Decide Between Money and Meaning

2012 was the year of money. I made a lot of it.

Making money is easy, making meaning is hard. Making money is finding it where you can get it, and last year, I found it everywhere. I had six different sources of income (eight, if you’re the IRS), that made me more than six-figures. Mostly from my pajamas at home, sometimes with a sandwich at a coffee shop.

Making money is fantastic. People that tell you otherwise, I don’t get them. Money feels good, and earning money feels real good. There’s something particularly great when you earn it directly, without a middleman, something about proving your worth.

Especially when your main activity prior to bringing in the cash was the torture of “What should I do with my life?”, “I want to do something meaningful!” and “I’m not living up to my potential.”

Making money after a constant wringing-of-the-hands is freedom. At least in the beginning. Making money after a career in non-profits and startups (my first job out of college paid me $26,500), is all the more amazing to me. No background in banking, no experience in sales. Just desire (and if it’s not obvious, a lot of work, positioning and connections, lest I perpetuate the myth of the American Dream).

Salaried jobs have a ceiling. You work, and “get a salary and a status bump with every sideways leap… flightiness is the new aggression,” argues New Yorker’s Nathan Heller. After job-hopping, you work and make more when you do more. And then finally, you work more until you realize you can’t make more. You hit the ceiling. Maybe with some maneuvering you could earn an extra $20K a year. But most people hit the ceiling and then settle.

I hit the ceiling and looked for a window.

It started with a dinner party. I met the owner of a small business, followed his company, and noticed an opening for a full-time marketing professional. I pitched him the idea that I could do everything in his job description for two-thirds of the salary and half the time. The next day, I still had my full-time job, and signed my first client.

“Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces,” argues the Atlantic.

Creating a portfolio career, where we have more than one job/employer/client at a time is not for the feint of heart. Many of us have employers, precisely because we don’t like what we do. It’s easier to shift personal responsibility to the organization. It’s easier to play a pre-defined role instead of create your own. And despite being the most entrepreneurial generation, for many Gen Yer’s it hasn’t sunk in yet that a salaried job carries just as much risk as a do-it-yourself career.

Regular emails from young graduates land in my inbox, frustrated by their Starbucks career, anxious for “real work.” Their search for the elusive dream job lacks any real direction or enthusiasm, except for an insistence that they don’t want to be part of the sixty percent of America who can’t put a finger on what’s holding them back from their goals. Not knowing our purpose in life, it’s unbearable. “My insatiable desire for more money, knowledge, time and freedom leaves me perpetually unsatisfied,” argues blogger Ryan Stephens.

Gen Y’s overwhelming anxiety began long before the recession, and has only deepened after being forced into jobs we should feel grateful for, but instead only make us feel claustrophobic. Pile on the generation’s massive debt and unconscionable unemployment rate, and we’re at a loss to do anything but ask, “Now, what?”

I chose money, at least for the short-term. I paid off my student loans, maxed out my Roth IRA, built a six-month emergency fund, bought a new wardrobe twice, nested our new place, and paid for a two-week European vacation (with real beds and adult dinners). I chose money over settling. But I also chose it over meaning.

It’s here I’d like to say I proved my hypothesis – that you should make money, and do what you love on the side. But jobs that pay well require your full attention. And insatiable desires to change the world don’t just go away (darn it).

So 2012 closes how it started, between making money and creating meaning, a rock and a hard place. I’m relieved to have my finances in better order. I’m proud to have proved “my worth.” And I’m still desperate to do something with my life.

How do you reconcile your dreams with a paycheck? 

Categories
Career Finding a job Generation Y

10 Reasons to Job-Hop in Your Career

Gen Y came out of school exploring one job to the next, but when the recession hit, many said the days of job-hopping were over. However, there’s no reason to be scared into longevity at your current position. Over at Brazen Careerist, I explore the ten reasons to keep job-hopping. Read it here.

Categories
Career Finding a job Generation Y

Graduates: Kick-Start Your Career in 3 Easy Steps

The emails I get most often are from recent college grads who are depressed about their job prospects. I always give them the same advice, and I’ve included some of those steps in my latest post on U.S. News and World Report today. You can read it here and then let me know what strategies you’ve used to successfully kick-start your career.

Categories
Education Finding a job Generation Y

Stop Fussing About Student Loans, and Find Gen Y a Job

Student debt is being compared to the housing crisis. Catastrophe? Imminent. We’re thrusting our kids into vast amounts of financial turmoil, and for what? Disaster. And while that may be true (education does need a transformation), debt is not the main issue on a young person’s mind.

“You would think that student loans are young people’s only priority,” argues New York Times columnist Charles Blow. “They’re not. In fact, a cleverly designed survey released this week by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics asked respondents ages 18 to 29 to choose between pairings of issues to determine which ones they felt were more important. Among domestic issues, creating jobs always won.”

Student debt wouldn’t be such a big deal if recent grads could find a job. Because the problem isn’t the loan, but the job to pay off the loan to start living life. You only care about paying off student debt if you’re ready to settle down, buy a house, get married, and have kids. But young people delay adulthood. We buy houses later. We get married later. We have kids later. So it doesn’t matter that paying off loans comes later too — if you have a job.

While there has been much ado about the cost of tuition – college debt has reportedly tripled since 1981 – students rarely pay the full tuition cost because scholarships and financial aid have risen as well.  “For the current school year, the average sticker price for tuition and fees at a private, nonprofit college is $28,500,” reports NPR writer Jacob Goldstein. “And yet, the average price students actually pay is less than half that — $12,970. That’s almost identical to the $12,650 that students paid, on average, in the 2001-2002 school year.”

Not to mention, college debt is a deliberate choice young people make. I’m from Illinois, but went out-of-state for school. My mother pleaded with me to go in-state. Same education, lower cost. Of course I knew she was right, but every college student knows the price of higher education doesn’t simply include courses, room and board, but the experience of stepping out and being on your own. An experience I simply didn’t want to have in my hometown.

Many other young people have made similar choices. Kelsey Griffith, 23, attended Ohio Northern, a private college that costed her nearly $50,000 a year. “As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” Ms. Griffith, a marketing major, told the New York Times. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”

You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t sympathize with Ms. Griffith. Smart enough to go to a private school, but can’t do basic math? I pity the marketing budget she’ll soon manage.

We deliberately choose to take on debt to get the best possible education. And while the same could be said of mortgage debt and our pursuit of the American Dream, unlike the the housing crisis, student loan interest rates are low, and the forgiveness level is high. If you don’t have a job, you can delay payments. If you’re experiencing economic hardship, you can delay payments. God forbid you want to go back to school and incur more debt, you can once again delay payments. The system does everything it can to help you get on your feet.

Personally, I went to a public school trading the corn of Illinois for the cows of Wisconsin. At the time, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s out-of-state tuition was the highest among Big Ten schools. The University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana (located in my hometown) was the lowest. My debt totaled around $12,300 (the average per borrower is $23,300, not the $60,000-$100,000 outliers often strut out in news stories). I paid it off earlier this year, in part, because I’ve been continuously employed since graduation.

Many other young people aren’t so lucky. A whopping fifty-three percent of recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, and that’s why we care eighty percent more about creating jobs over addressing social security, lowering the tax burden on Americans, income inequality, combatting climate change, reducing the role of big money in elections, or developing an immigration policy.

Not a generation to be down on our luck, we’ll take a paycheck where we can get it. Recent graduates are now more likely to work as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined. Steve King of New Communications Research argues “the grim job market is another key reason more young Americans are pursuing work as independents (temps, freelancers, etc.).”

Gen Y just wants to work. So let us. Provide jobs that could change the educational system, the economy, the world, instead of fussing about student loans. Then Gen Y could pay our debts, and that would be energy well-spent.

Categories
Career Generation Y Leadership Management

The Young, Motivated & Unsatisfied

I recently met a young woman who wanted to start a blog from a teacher’s perspective that revealed a teacher’s real and true thoughts. Like how bratty the kids are. How she cusses at them in her head and makes fun of how they dress.

She wasn’t alone; a whole group of her teacher friends were planning to anonymously co-author the venomous expose together. I felt sorry for her students. So very deeply sorry and guilty, but Ryan had left my side and I didn’t know anyone else at the party and I was stuck and uncomfortable and anxious for the future of kids I didn’t know and would never meet.

So we kept talking, and she told me more of what she wanted to do: Get into education administration, lobby reform to politicians, overthrow outdated lesson plans, revolutionize school requirements, change the whole entire educational system.

Turns out? Not so jaded. Just so desperately and achingly unsatisfied.

“Worker satisfaction in the United States is at an all-time low,” reports the New York Times.  “Only 45 percent of workers are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61 percent in 1987. The findings show that the decline goes well beyond concerns about job security. Employees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their organizations and the quality of their managers.”

And it’s not just those people that have settled and resigned their dreams to the attic who are so unhappy, but a large percentage of what the Harvard Business Review calls “high-potentials” – those young rising stars that have the ability to have an enormous impact on how we work and live.

“One in three emerging stars report feeling disengaged from his or her company, and admits not putting all of his effort into his job,” the HBR study reports. These highly disengaged high performers have more than doubled from 8% in 2008 to 21% in 2009. And one-quarter of these highest-potential people intend to jump ship within the year despite the recession.

High-performance workers are being consistently and abhorrently under-utilized. Companies and managers must give motivated and ambitious young employees the ability to perform or risk irrelevance.

“When emerging talent is never truly developed and tested, the firm finds itself with a sizable cadre of middle and senior managers who can’t shoulder the demands of the company’s most challenging (and promising) opportunities,” the researchers warn.

So maybe it’s time to stop making young people pay dues. And stop assigning fluff projects. And maybe managers could stop putting the kind of hold on workers that is so tight that they’ll pop right out of their slippery control.

We are your sick, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free of the industrial age molds that keep us shackled in our desks from nine to five. Your greatest challenges are our greatest thrills. Let us execute, and then execute again. Let us fail, let us win. Let us do. Let us work.

“True leadership development takes place under conditions of real stress – indeed, the very best programs place emerging leaders in ‘live fire’ roles where new capabilities can – or more accurately, must – be acquired,” the researchers report.

Yes, let us work.  Stimulating and meaningful work that leads to compelling career paths and the chance to prosper if you do.

We’ll hide the red tape in the breakroom.

Categories
Generation Y Resource Guides

Resource Guide: Best of Generation Y

Generation Y has always been one of my favorite topics to write about it. This guide provides a good introduction if you’re new to the topic, or some refreshing inspiration if you’re old hat. Each post contains a specific and articulated point of view, and links out to many more pieces of research, essays and ideas. As a generation, we are defining new movements and ideas.

Twenty-two of my favorites:

1. Generation Y is too quiet, too conservative
To light a fire, you have to have conflict, and to have conflict, you have to have an opinion.

2. Women will lead Generation Y – What will men do?
Alpha women are leading Generation Y, possibly at the expense of men.

3. Generation Y doesn’t need a reference
Arguing against the idea of needing a reference from a previous employer to get a job.

4. Back off: Gen Y’s helicopter parents are a good thing
Don’t sensationalize a generally good trend.

5. Generation Y is the ER doctor of generations
Gen Y doesn’t specialize. Is that putting our work at risk?

6. Gen Y women: out of the workplace woods?
Generation Y women are growing up believing they don’t have to worry about sexism, only to be confronted with it head-on in the workplace.

7. No “A for Effort:” How Colleges Fail Generation Y
Education is failing a startling rate. Universities have declining assets, growing liabilities, and only half of teenagers who enroll in college end up with a Bachelor’s degree.

8. Is Gen Y losing religion?
Some people talk about practicing religion a la carte, while others talk about leaving church entirely and finding a new kind of community as a result.

9. 3 workplace weaknesses that are really Gen Y strengths
Revealing our weaknesses as strengths in the new workplace.

10. Is Gen Y teamwork killing creativity?
Gen Y is all about the team, preferring conformity inside the lines over pushing boundaries or ourselves.

11. Gen Y needs boundaries for action
The consequences of our aimless wandering delay adulthood, but also our chance at genuine happiness.

12. The rising rift between Gen X and Gen Y
Controversial post on the differences between the X and Y generations.

13. Gen Y to cities: Don’t ignore us
Gen Y should be of the utmost priority for cities since we are uniquely positioned to stimulate economic development.

14. Will Gen Y ruin local community?
Young people have the best intentions to be part of the communities we live in, but we’re being challenged by a number of conflicting events that contribute to a lack of involvement in local community.

15. Why Generation Y should job-hop, even in the recession
Four ways to feel secure in today’s economy.

16. 7 concessions and a challenge to Gen Y naysayers
Conceding that we don’t know it all, and asking how to create meaningful interactions between generations.

17. Why Gen Y should talk about politics at work
Taboo topics are quickly becoming acceptable as part of Generation Y’s demand for authenticity and transparency. Except, maybe, for politics.

18. What Generation Y Fears the Most
Entering the workforce only furthers the distance between us and the issues that matter.

19. Generation Y breeds a new kind of woman
Women need men. Just not like we used to.

20. The real Generation Y work ethic
Gen Y is working hard, contrary to popular belief.

21. Dissent in the Gen Y ranks – family or career?
Arguing against the idea that a family holds you back from career success.

22. What it means to be a Gen Y leader
One of my first posts that started it all….

Keep Reading:
Visit more than 400 of the best links on Generation Y from around the web >
Curated by yours truly.

Favorite Gen Y Bloggers
These people make me think or laugh. Sometimes both.

I hope you enjoy this resource! Feel free to leave your favorite links on Generation Y in the comments as you come across them. Resource guides will be available permanently on the sidebar.

Categories
College Education Generation Y

3 Ways to Upgrade College

Yesterday’s post on how colleges are failing Generation Y explored the collapse of our education system. There were so many good comments from that post, I incorporated several into today’s post which explores some ideas on how to re-build:

1. Get rid of most tenured full-time professors.

This is already the reality. The New York Times reports that in 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or on the tenure-track. Today, a mere 27 percent are.

Talented faculty employed purely on a per-course or yearly contract basis don’t receive any benefits, earn a third or less of their tenured colleagues, and are “treated as second-class citizens on most campuses,” the Times aruges. So, we need to create a system that rewards – and grants tenure – to those instructors who aren’t working full-time.

Why? Consider that “professoring part-time is already a hobby for overachieving architects, graphic designers, lawyers and entrepreneurs, all of whom can share insights from real-world experiences that full-time academics haven’t had.” Professors who solely exist in the academic vacuum will never contribute to an educational system that keeps up with today’s frenetic pace.

Instructors could divide their time between 20% research, 30% teaching and 50% real-world experience. Those same instructors would be awarded tenure to garner the respect, input and weight as a resident professor does today. What a luxurious and significant appointment that would be!

2. Create cross-curricular programs focused on foundational skills, not breadth of topic.

Carol Phillips teaches marketing at the University of Notre Dame and noted, “I work very hard to make the class relevant, but reality is that what I teach is likely to be old hat by the time my students graduate… Five years ago I was talking about BMW Films, now it’s Twitter. Five years from now it will be something else. It doesn’t really matter, the principles endure. Relevance is overrated.”

It’s quite possible that the field you work in today won’t exist in five years, or will be unrecognizable in its current form. Today’s jobs aren’t representative of a factory line, but instead require employees to make connections between fields and ideas, and be responsive and flexible to change.

No longer is your career a set of skills applicable to a single position. Colleges need to concentrate less on checking on the latest trends in their syllabi and more on foundational skill sets that will transfer from job to job, and moreover how to apply those skills in a myriad of areas.

3. Build continuing education, not grad school.

“I’m supposed to learn everything I need to know for the rest of my life in 4 years between the ages of 18 and 22? Give me a break,” says Sam Davidson.

When education fails, so too do the businesses and innovations built upon its foundation. Graduates move into real-world jobs that leave them confined to cubicles, engaging in little professional development, and otherwise left to reading books, and in some cases, writing blogs for further intellectual development.

Conferences aren’t built for learning, but networking. Grad school isn’t much better. You could turn to your alma mater’s continuing education program, but the classes offered are based more on a person’s hobbies than scholarly achievement. Like, I love taking the adult dance classes, but I really wish UW offered some history classes. Maybe philosophy. The exact courses many colleges are cutting, let alone offering as a continuation after your graduate.

An educational system that views learning as continual and ongoing would go a long way towards alleviating the fears students have of picking a major, picking a career, a life path, and trying to squeeze all of their erudition into four to six years. It’s a tragic disappointment that we look at education as something to be finished. It takes the fun and curiosity out of learning, and it’s why a great number of students don’t enjoy school or are just plain bored.

Students will always have a choice of how hard to push themselves. A university’s job is to serve up the challenges when you do. This list is only the beginning; I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What do you think? Are these realistic? What are your ideas to improve education? Do you expect change to happen any time soon?

Categories
College Education Generation Y

No “A for Effort:” How Colleges Fail Generation Y

Originally wait-listed for acceptance at UW-Madison, I remember very clearly the night I finally received my large envelope from the school, with the Badger-red “Yes!” emboldened on the back flap. I was in.

And while the University of Wisconsin may have had doubts about letting a neighboring born-and-bred Illinois resident into their borders, I quickly forgave their hesitation, becoming a dedicated student to the school and its culture. I garnered a 4.0 GPA or darn-near close to it every semester, religiously “studied” at the Terrace, partied at State Street bars, and worked as the school’s top student fundraiser at the UW Foundation. Plus, I actually graduated in four years.

Little did I know, I was an anomaly.

A couple years later, the Lt. Governor of Wisconsin invited me to be part of a special retreat pondering the question, “What really matters in college?” with a specific focus on liberal arts programs.

Nearing the end of the retreat, we set goals and plans for the future. As the token Gen Yer, I was obviously eager, but our next meeting didn’t convene until a full seven months after the original weekend, and the following meeting was scheduled for four months after, and was subsequently postponed. Indefinitely.

“I’ve gone, I’ve done it, and I have serious concerns about my actual level of preparedness to contribute anything meaningful to my fellow humans,” one young blogger writes about her educational experiences.

And it’s no wonder. Education is failing a startling rate. Universities have declining assets, growing liabilities. An Ohio State economics professor reports that “students study, attend class and write papers fewer than 30 hours a week, for only about 30 weeks a year. While the typical American employee works 1,800 hours a year, the typical college student works half that amount on academics.”

Only 33 percent of University of Massachusetts freshmen graduate within six years (not even four), which economist Mark Schneider refers to as a ‘failure factory,’ and those colleges are the norm.

Only half of teenagers who enroll in college end up with a Bachelor’s degree. This is such a failure to society’s economic potential that we could easily list public universities alongside the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that have irreparably damaged the American economy. But we don’t. Somehow, the failure of education is not as worthy of our ire.

Colleges, in the meantime, are scrambling to stay on top of the pace of innovation and the ever-changing job-market by eliminating majors like philosophy (University of Louisiana) and American studies and classics (Michigan State) after declining enrollments in those areas.

But even as colleges and universities rush to prove their relevance, everyone agrees (colleges and employers alike) that students are specializing too early. “There’s this linear notion that what you major in equals your career,” reports Katherine Brooks, director of the liberal arts career center at the University of Texas. “I’m sure it works for some majors. The truth is students think too much about majors. The major isn’t nearly as important as the toolbox of skills you come out with and the experiences you have.”

If majors aren’t all that important anymore, then why are colleges and universities still set up that way? Why aren’t students prepared for the real world? And why are educational institutions scrambling to protect traditional hierarchies and predict the next big thing instead of restructuring the educational system to run in parallel with innovation?

“There isn’t anything wrong with the teacher/student relationship. It’s only been around for two or three millennia,” says Dean Edward Snyder of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. A comment so arrogant that we have to assume Dean Snyder isn’t intentionally asinine, but rather simply doesn’t want to abdicate his throne of being “in the “last [and] best position to influence [student’s] overall academic, ethical, and professional development.”

Nevertheless, the gross inadequacies of the current educational system should excite you. They should excite you as a changemaker, entrepreneur, parent or future parent, capitalist or socialist, as an optimist, and as a person who wants to learn and succeed.

The educational system is committing travesties against Gen Y. Ready to throw the book at ‘em?

Roll Call.

What are your experiences with education? Did college prepare you for the real world? Your profession? What do you think?

Are online degrees an option? 

(PS – Tune in tomorrow (Thu) for Part 2 of this post, in which I’ll offer some ideas for solutions.)