Alex Chediak

Helping young adults thrive at college and beyond

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Thriving at College

More Students Seeking Help for Anxiety & Depression

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Dana Hashmonay, now 21, took a medical leave during her sophomore year of college after struggling with anxiety at school.Katie Reilly, for Time magazine, writes that “Record Numbers of College Students Are Seeking Treatment for Depression and Anxiety — But Schools Can’t  Keep Up.” An excerpt:

“Between 2009 and 2015, the number of students visiting counseling centers increased by about 30% on average, while enrollment grew by less than 6%, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found in a 2015 report. Students seeking help are increasingly likely to have attempted suicide or engaged in self-harm, the center found. In spring 2017, nearly 40% of college students said they had felt so depressed in the prior year that it was difficult for them to function, and 61% of students said they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the same time period, according to an American College Health Association survey of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools.”

Read the whole article.

 

Interview with Tommy McGregor (The Transmission)

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Tommy McGregor works with The Transmission, a ministry geared at helping parents and students with the transition to life after high school. It was a pleasure to speak with him this morning about how students can prepare to thrive at college. The Skype interview was part of a Senior Summit project that The Transmission will be releasing in a few weeks.

Update: The Senior Summit, an online video summit about the transition to the challenges of college life, is now available as a free resource.

Ben Sasse – The Vanishing American Adult

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Do we really need another book about entitled millennials? Or about the helicopter parents who raise these precious darlings? Senator Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis — and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance exceeds expectations. It challenges both parents and our culture, offering compelling and timely solutions.

The Problem

Sasse has no issue with adolescence. The problem is one of perpetual adolescence — an indefinite period in which youth are passive and aimless. Why is this so common? In part because teens today are used to an unprecedented degree of comfort. Raising kids once meant adding small (but necessary) workers to the family.

Teens today are used to an unprecedented degree of comfort. Our kids may be safer, but they’re also softer. But our wealth, technology, and digital economy have radically changed this pattern. We now emphasize the protection of our children rather than their productivity. While our kids may be safer, they’re also softer — more hooked on comforts like AC, their own bedroom, an Xbox, etc. They are unfamiliar with manual labor at a time when lifelong learning and flexibility are more important than ever in our disrupted economy.

Read the rest of the review here.

Must all Graduates Wander Aimlessly in Their Twenties?

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selingo-bookUntil recently, a bachelor’s degree was a sure ticket to social mobility and a promising career. But today’s graduates face unprecedented headwinds in the form of declining wages, ballooning student debt, and greater competition for fewer jobs.

That’s the case journalist Jeff Selingo makes in an insightful new book, There is Life After College (HarperCollins). “The plight of today’s young adults,” writes Selingo, “is a result of a longer-term shift in the global workforce that is having an outsized impact on people in their twenties who have little work experience.”

Selingo presents his case persuasively. Young adult unemployment is at its highest point in four decades, peaking at 9 percent a few years ago. Of arguably greater consequence, nearly half of college graduates in their twenties are underemployed, beating out their less educated peers for barista and clerical jobs. With a glut of supply, employers can be choosy, leading to the increasingly common “unpaid internship” expectation, and other forms of “try before you buy” hiring. To make matters worse, student debt loads among recent graduates are at an all-time high and starting salaries are barely budging. While Mom and Dad once beamed when their child received his or her diploma, the uncertainty and instability of the early professional years now give parents reason to worry afresh.

Read the rest of it.

Only 11% of employers think graduating students have the skills that their businesses need

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Now HiringHow can employers be simultaneously unhappy with the quality of recent graduates and more desirous of hiring people with greater amounts of formal education? Ryan Craig, founding Managing Director of University Ventures, writes:

What we’re seeing from employers—the ultimate consumers of higher education—is the result of dissatisfaction with the current level of talent being produced by colleges and universities. Employers are dissatisfied and are flailing about for answers. For many employers, this means credential inflation—requiring certain degrees for jobs that previously didn’t require them. An equally logical response for others is openness to alternative credentials.

Read the whole thing.

5 Suggestions for Getting a College Degree Without Going Broke

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collegeThough it may have gotten buried with the New Year’s holiday, I had an article published in Fox News Opinion on how to get a college degree without going broke. I outlined five things every student can do. Here’s the opening:

The disappearance of low-skilled jobs and a rising earnings premium sparked a dramatic uptick in college enrollment over the past few decades.

At first, students could afford it, graduating with minimal (if any) debt, and entering an expanding job market with rising wages.

But now? Real median household income is down 6.5% from 2007-2014. Salaries for 25-34 year olds have remained stagnant for a decade. Meanwhile, the price of college continues its precipitous rise. And countless students and families feel caught between a rock and a hard place: They can’t afford to send their kids to college, but their kids can’t afford not to have degrees.

Read the whole thing.

I outline five things students can do to get a degree without going broke.

1.Prioritize value over prestige when choosing a college.

2. Leverage skills to earn higher wage income during college.

3. Have a game plan to finish.

4. Be expeditious about graduating.

5. Have a greater understanding of how the system works.

These are unpacked further in my book, Beating the College Debt Trap.