Entitled, impatient, disillusioned, and unemployed

Did you know that a record 85% of recent college graduates are now living back home with their parents? So says the introduction in Psychology Today to an article by recent grad Cristina Schreil.

“We are a very entitled generation,” 23-year-old Lilia Sterling, who moved in with her parents after graduating from NYU, observed. Sterling confronted a fruitless job search.

“My parents said, maybe not explicitly, do whatever you love, do whatever makes you happy.” Months later, she finally realized, “‘It’s time to do whatever I can.’”

Brianna Flaherty, who graduated in May and lives in New York City before she’ll have “to give up and move home,” is unemployed. She spends hours on Craigslist and writing cover letters. When she interviewed at a bakery recently, there were 250 others competing with her to frost cupcakes at 5:00am.

“I no longer buy into the idea that having a degree will give you your dream job,” she told me. She’s exasperated. “I see on Craigslist that my Creative Writing degree, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, qualifies me to be a receptionist.”

Christina adds,

Perhaps one difference between college grads in recessions of the past and grads today is our lack of patience.

“We’re used to getting what we want, right away,” says Alana Dowden, a grad from University of California, Santa Barbara. “If we want to download a song, we can hear it in seconds.” To Dowden, this could prove frustrating for job-hunting grads that need to adapt to the “real world,” adopting a completely different outlook than they did in school.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking to the Psychology Today article.