Here’s Your Degree. Now Go Defeat Demagogues. | Bloomberg | April 2016 The following is an adaptation of an address to the University of Michigan’s class of 2016. The most useful knowledge that you leave here with today has nothing to do with your major. It’s about how to study, cooperate, listen carefully, think critically and resolve conflicts through reason.
Wondering whether today’s college students have become too fragile? Read this document. | Washington Post | May 2013 I’ve written before about the array of upsetting things that college students have demanded trigger warnings for (fatphobia, nude models in a life drawing class, etc.), as well as the kinds of activities that now get somewhat arbitrarily punished as “acts of
Should You Bring Mom and Dad to the Office? | Wall Street Journal | September 2013 Millennials—people born between 1981 and the early 2000s—are much closer to their parents than previous generations, and they have gained a reputation for being coddled by so-called helicopter parents, say researchers who study Millennials. But when they started joining the workforce in the early
When Helping Hurts | New York Times | May 2013 AMERICAN parents are more involved in our children’s lives than ever: we schedule play dates, assist with homework and even choose college courses. We know that all of this assistance has costs — depleted bank balances, constricted social lives — but we endure them happily, believing we are doing what
Millennials Now Bringing Their Parents Along On Job Interviews | Huffington Post | September 2013 Though this may seem like a pretty basic rule of getting-a-job etiquette, 8 percent of recent college grads brought their parents along to an interview, according to an Adecco survey cited by the Wall Street Journal. What’s more, a full 3 percent actually had their
It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave | New York Times | June 2014 These boomerang kids are not a temporary phenomenon. They appear to be part of a new and permanent life stage. More than that, they represent a much larger anxiety-provoking but also potentially thrilling economic evolution that is affecting all of us. It’s so new, in fact,