Well you’re dealing with the top 1-5% (approximately) of college students. A lot of evidence suggests that the fortunes of this group have come unglued from those of 95-99% of their peers. Is it possible the behavior you’re describing is class-bound rather than generation-bound?
BTW: What do you do in case of a boomerang? Just say “lol no” or do some of them actually worm their way back in?
Back in the day people did these all the time. In fact prior to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act going out to a bar on Thursday was an option for nearly all college students.
I know this because it’s not hard to find out what your parents did when they went to college. Although my mom graduated 40 years ago, so maybe her generation caused the entitlement problem you mentioned.
If you are primarily recruiting from super-selective colleges and universities, it is entirely possible that the generational changes that you are seeing are specific to those schools, particularly as the selectivity and probably typical family income level of students have gone up.
But what you see at those schools may not reflect the general college student population.
^this might be a case in point of why hiring from “aspirational” colleges with less entitled students or students from lower income/middle income backgrounds may be a very good idea even at elite firms. Are you allowed to try that hiring experiment? (I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of Baruch kids out there who wouldn’t disappoint 
- those aren’t entitled and they’re usually bright, resourceful, and hard-working)
Bingo! (Hint: the answer is, ‘not the boomers’. It would be the millennials, who will be paying off their own “free” education. Why they would support more government ‘free stuff’, which is just more debt, is beyond my comprehension.)
Free college is proposed to be paid for out of tax increases in the very top income brackets. I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I do not think it is fair to punish success, on the other hand, my family struggles to feed all of us while some of my friends families are worried about finding ways to avoid taxing their international assets. I think that free tuition is a fine idea. The wealthiest families will pay out of taxes so the idea that high income families will pay nothing is wrong. Additionally, we could always borrow from our exorbitant defense budget…
I think also that free college is going to change a lot of what we think of as college. In Germany, colleges are not the experience they are here in America. Sports and activities are highly limited, almost all students commute, clubs, orchestras and extracurriculars are nearly non-existent. This is the price of free college, something that is not the same residential experience we Americans have come to associate with college. I’m not sure how I feel about that either. I’d like to go to a school where I can have that experience, but I also don’t want to have 60k hanging over my head for it.
I think that, if we ever have free colleges, there will still be private colleges. Just the public colleges would be free.
And, yes, many of the frills may go away- but maybe not. But the frills are just that, and they could still be available for pay at the private schools.
Also - re: the taxes to pay for it. I happen to be in an upper income bracket. I don’t view our higher taxes as punitive. I see our being taxed as a way of giving back and contributing to the community, local government, federal government, public infrastructure, etc. That’s what taxes are for - ideally, we get public services in return for them which benefit the entire community. I find it completely fair that we are taxed a bit more than someone making 50k or even 100k a year. People pay what they can afford - and again, there are services in return. (And it doesn’t matter to me if I even use those services myself.)
So, no need for anyone to feel like they are punishing my family for contributing to the tax pool for free or more affordable college. I feel like it’s a public good worth contributing to.
Chime with @BeeDAre #126—as a number of people have pointed out (among recent commentators, perhaps most eloquently by John Green, of all people), taxes to fund education are great and we should all be willing to pay them regardless of whether or not we get a direct benefit from them, because we all benefit when we don’t have to live around stupid people.*
I see my taxes as insurance against being wiped out in a revolution of the proletariat. Educating them for free might make that even less likely.
Hey, one of the benefits of a pluralistic society is that all sorts of motivations are welcome, @Hunt! :)>-
The other thing they have in Germany is quotas on who can attend “free” college. Most kids can’t go and are diverted into non-college tracks in secondary school. As is often the case, stuff you get for “free” may not be what you want.
I frankly think we would be better off if we didn’t just keep expanding the size of our current college model. I’d like to see the model change to include a very low cost 13th and 14th grade (probably at a commuter CC) that could be used for a variety of tracks. With only some moving on to university.
Half the kids who start 4 year college don’t graduate. And a lot of those degrees don’t do much for the recipients. I’d rather see the development of better college alternative tracks than just keep throwing more money and more kids at the current model of 4 years schools. Which is very expensive and doesn’t result in enough good outcomes.
I think having free public schools will also force private schools to reign in those fees. Part of the reason why the cost keeps skyrocketing is simple supply and demand. The price goes up because people keep finding ways to pay for it. So long as people are still buying, colleges will keep selling at the highest possible price.
A lot of German programs take place in non universities but are colleges by US standards, such as FachHochschülen, which are tech colleges, there are nursing schools, etc. and those aren’t as selective as the “long” universities which offer all programs up to the PHD, you can apply from a variety of tracks including but not limited to Gymnasium. Most programs don’t have quotas per se, but rather require certain grades or certain courses, similar to what is done in Canada. The exception is Medicine, which is super super hard to get into and does have quotas and waitlists that can last years.
I agree that an apprenticeship model could be built: first year students observe and do grunt work for free while learning the trade and taking classes (so their work pays their tuition), then their second year they’re paid minimum wage plus get free tuition, and finally their final year they are paid 75% the going rate for their chosen trade and choose specialty classes. Businesses could estimate their needs and list their places in the Spring, then go rounds of selection until all places are filled, say, in July. I think this would be a good model for many jobs that require training above high school but not necessarily a college degree. In effect, there’d be the equivalent of 4 semesters worth of classes spread over 3 years with a lot of work experience. The business is contracted to keep the youth all three years unless there’s a huge problem (like, the kid comes to work drunk, or doesn’t show…)
Aha. That’s the detail you usually don’t hear in conjunction with the wonders of free education.
The other thing is that German students are much more in tune with society’s needs. Over here the kids tend to say “You can’t tell me what to do…”
The apprenticeship model does exist in the United States, it just isn’t as immediately thought of as in places like Germany. But: When my oldest went to a recent regional college and career fair, there were military recruiters and the local college’s technical programs (e.g., welding) alongside colleges from across the country, but nary a single apprenticeship-based program, even though that’s how the local utilities get nearly all their locally-produced linemen, to offer one example.
Having lived in Germany and interacted with German students, I don’t know that I’d call this an entirely accurate characterization…
But then doesn’t the German education system track students into different paths much earlier, before they reach the age where they are more prone to rebelling against tracking imposed on them by the schools and/or parents?
Earlier tracking can allow education to be optimized for each track, but at the cost of mis-tracking some students.
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Born and went to school in Germany, but opinions can vary.
How about mandatory two-year national service for all 18-year-olds with an education or training benefit to follow? Not just military service, either.