The point of summer camp

I went to several different summer camps as an adolescent - one of them for six summers in a row - and worked at two more. I also spent all five of my years as an undergraduate living in the dorms.

There's an interesting connection there. The summer camps I went to and worked at were mostly populated by socioeconomically similar crowds; and almost all summer camps, whether or not they bill themselves as a pre-college experience, expose youth to many of the things that are likely to trip them up in a freshman year at a university.

There are, as I see it, three reasons why freshmen wash out. In most cases, two or more apply. The least common - by far - is that they simply cannot handle the coursework they've taken on; it is too difficult for them. College admissions are generally competitive, and introductory college coursework is generally not that difficult. The two more common reasons are a little more subtle.

The first common reason - quite obvious to anybody who has seen new students spiral into alcoholism, skip classes, or take up drugs - is inability to handle being responsible for themselves. We could break this reason into many smaller reasons if we like, but many freshmen are not prepared - in some cases, not able - to handle their day-to-day lives independently. More on this reason another day.

The second common reason is failing to adapt to their new environment socially. It is the freshmen who go home every weekend who, one weekend, stay home. They are homesick, they have difficulty making new friends, they miss their dog, their siblings, their boyfriend or girlfriend back home, and their parents. They can't handle dorm life - the roommate, the communal hall, perhaps a shared bathroom and kitchen.

And this seems a most practical reason for packing your kid off to summer camp, where they can learn to cope with homesickness, with making new friends in an environment where they already know few, if any, of the others, and learn to cope with a communal lifestyle similar to the one common in the "college experience." I can't help but think that kids that went off to camp just might turn out to handle that experience a little bit better. I wonder if there have been any good studies done - it's very difficult to control for the socioeconomic factors here...

No winning: Incentives

Lately in my home state of North Carolina, there's been a lot of talk about corporate incentives. The way it works is straightforward: A company makes noises about considering locating in such-and-such places, and then turns around and asks state and local governments what it's worth to them to locate there. A special tax cut, an outright rebate, land arrangements, utility support, etc.

The result is that state and local governments are competing with each other to bid for a share of tax dollars and economic development. It's like the prisoner's dilemma: If one town/state offers incentives, and the other doesn't, they win with a low bid and take home a large benefit, reduced slightly by the cost of the incentive. If none offer incentives, one location gets the maximum possible benefit - a crapshoot, but a fair one. If a bidding war springs up, it turns into a crapshoot with a low payout.

The best strategy for all of us on the tax-paying end would be for nobody to offer any targeted incentives at all; the best strategy for each individual location is to bid up to the anticipated value of the prize. In which case the corporation comes out ahead, and the rest of us experience a slim net benefit. Throw in the griping about unfair taxation, threats to relocate from existing industries unless they get a similar break, and some bad math by legislators and town councils, I think the rest of us are outright losing the incentive game.

Gripes about the housing process so far...

The most talked-about part of the offer my graduate school sent me was the graduate housing guarantee. Having read it, and gone on to read the most recent internal committee report on the housing guarantee, and then read the rates quoted on the website, I thought that this meant that I would have some variety of affordable housing. Barely affordable, but affordable.

What I didn't read was the noise-filled, flash-intensive website of a private subcontractor, who runs the other graduate housing units, the ones that the university doesn't actually own. The rent is much higher in these privately-run "luxury apartments."

Seriously? You're going to use the word "luxury" in describing graduate student housing? Someone's priorities are messed up. If I had gone on to read those rates, and realized that my school was going to put me in one of the expensive apartments, and that they would be asking for two rent payements prior to even moving in... well, the  offer would have looked a lot less attractive.

The margin for housing to be considered "affordable" is 30-35% of income. By that standard, in order for the cheapest rent in the housing run by the private subcontractor to be considered even marginally affordable by Federal terms (35% of income spent on rent), you need an income of $26,000. Which is more than they pay graduate students. And to afford a single? Over $40K. This is enormously different from the units the university actually runs themselves.

And may I go back to the front-loading, and the silly fees? Application fee of $20. Security deposit of $150. $12.95 extra for them to process a credit card payment through a fourth party (how many middlemen are taking a cut?) and the first two months' rent due August 1st and September 1st when the move-in date is September 19th. Graduate student orientation? Guess. It's the 17th, and if you want to move in early, you get charged extra.

If I had known all of this earlier, I might have decided that thal school's financial support was simply unworkable. As is, now, I will find a way to manage to make ends meet, but you can bet I'm not happy about it. The fees are the most ridiculous part. I'm paying an 8.6% fee to reduce your paperwork? Even Paypal does not charge so much - and taking it out on the payee?

Perhaps in California, students are accustomed to going neck-deep in debt to afford housing, and it's considered essential to have a "resort-style" swimming pool at your apartment complex, etc. But where I come from, graduate students aren't interested in paying an extra $300-$500 per month to live in more luxurious digs. They're interested in having enough left over for groceries and just maybe putting something aside to work on those student loans they accumulated as an undergrad.

I know, I know, this is how the subcontractors make a mint and get their boat payments. But you'd think if the university was aware that problems affording housing both drive away prospective graduate students and prevent existing graduate students from making it through the program in a timely fashion (or at all, in some cases), they'd try to make sure the housing they were offering was affordable. And they are aware. I read the survey results cited in that report.

Patterns from nothing

Today is the day several people I know have a birthday. Five, according to Facebook, which informs me that I knew four of those in high school, no less - what a remarkable coincidence! - and two of them were reasonably good friends with each other, enough to share a five-way birthday party with several other nearby May-birthday friends.

Yet while it's quite unusual to have to have a couple of close friends from the same circle with a May 23rd birthday, it's hardly unusual to have two friends share the same birthday. By the time you know 23 birthdays, the odds are better than even that you know two people with shared birthdays. A remarkable coincidence - but of course, you're special, and you probably had to go through around 250 friends to find one who shared YOUR birthday.

We are inclined to recognize patterns in life. It's a useful skill, one that serves us well every day of our lives, but we're not always good judges of statistical significance, so sometimes we recognize patterns that are in fact simply random noise. This is where superstitions come from, and those little errant beliefs that aren't quite rational. Rationally, I know that having an ice-cold draft from the bar won't improve my motor control, but I swear, it seems to improve my bowling from atrocious to merely terrible!

Once we've picked out a pattern, and consciously identified it, we start to become emotionally attached to them. We've invested time and effort in it; every time you wear your lucky underpants and make out with a cute boy, you've reinforced the idea that they're lucky in your mind. When you wear them out and go home frustrated, you focus on another cause - a black cat, maybe a friend causing drama, there was something out there that interfered with your lucky underwear.

Psychologists have found intermittent reinforcement works very well, which might explain not only gambling addictions, but how doggedly we hang onto our curious patterns; medical doctors have found that delusion is remarkably effective at influencing how our bodies work. And there, we've come full circle. Most of the false patterns we see in life don't cause us much harm, and some even help us cope with the varied vagaries of life.

And who knows? Maybe a beer does relax me enough to let my cerebellum handle everything; maybe I treat my friend Terry like a little sister because I share a birthday with her big brother; and maybe, just maybe, your lucky sock makes you run just a little bit faster. But if you look hard enough for a pattern, one will emerge; whether it means anything or not is another matter entirely.

The bachelor's what?

More than anything else, the bachelor's degree seems to be a pass to a social class. Want a white collar job? Get a four year degree. Any four-year degree will do for most of them, as it will mark you as part of the educated middle class.

I can't count how many times I've heard it repeated that what major you had in college matters very little in the corporate world - or how many times I've heard someone say that what they majored in had nothing to do with what they do now. There's even a certain measure of truth to claims that the bachelor's degree is diluted, because there are very few specific things you need to know on graduation. Pick the right school, the right major, the right classes, and the right teachers, and you may coast through having learned very little curriculum material.

It does mark a measure of persistence, and work, or at least financial support of some kind, but while having a degree with (say) a major in chemistry means something specific, the bachelor's degree in general seems to be more a social marking than an educational one. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why demand for a college education is and will remain sky-high - because here in America, it's a pass into the white collar class. Those with a four year degree seem to bear some kind of warrant to look down upon those without one.

Mere curriculum material, I wager, would not warrant such demand. But social standing? Social standing is priceless, and I suspect that, more than anything else, accounts for the disparity in pay grade between those with and those without the sheepskin.