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Comment by gearoidoc | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you with one caveat: there really was a social contract in place that said something along the lines of "Finish third level and you'll walk into a job thats better than flipping burgers".

That contract has been broken. I think it was stupid to begin with but it was a message very clearly sent from generations, society, government that went before. As you say, it still is.

So does the writer have reason to be aggrieved? I think so. However, at some stage in an adults life they need to do some critical thinking and independently decide whats the optimal way to climb the pay ladder (legally).

That critical thinking is something that is simply not taught in schools. Perhaps its not teachable at all.

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> there really was a social contract in place that said something along the lines of "Finish third level and you'll walk into a job thats better than flipping burgers"

Was this ever true for a Masters in Creative Writing? My understanding is that this class of degree has always been a social signal for "my family is so wealthy, I will never need to work."

With the advent of government subsidized mass higher education in the US starting in the 1960s, that changed. Many high school teachers and college professors began heavily encouraging their idealistic, young, poor students to "follow their passion" and study creative writing and other non-marketable subjects.

This group feels that it is vulgar and crass to even mention money or economics in the context of art or pure academics, much less integrate it into your life's plans, thus setting almost all of their naive students up for massive disappointment when they graduate with a huge pile of student loan debt and no jobs available except picking kale for rich people for barely above minimum wage.

"This group feels that it is vulgar and crass to even mention money or economics in the context of art or pure academics" - I'm not sure where you're gleaning that from - my point was there was/still is a social contract in place that tells young people that graduating from a third level institution will be a signifier of above average intelligence and/or work ethic thus leading to at least better than working class job.

Perhaps you had the foresight (or your parents did) to see that such qualifications would drastically decrease in social value. Others didn't. Then again, maybe you just happen to work in tech and lack empathy for those who didn't luck out in their chosen industry.

No, actually, I speak from painfully learned experience, as a former poor student who is now the holder of a non-marketable university degree in history and philosophy, and a pile of student loan debt.

But my personal experience is entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Let's keep the personal stereotyping and passive-aggresive insults out of this discussion.

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