For UK folks, it's equivalent to a low 2:2, and approaches a third.

It means she will make vastly more money than you, work half the time and have twice as much paid vacation.

I doubt that very much I'm British, she's American.

I already get five weeks paid leave and work 37 hour weeks. From what I understand of the US I'd probably be fired for not being present enough. Here, I just go promoted.

America - you're doing it wrong.

From TFA:

1st = 100% Study 0% Party
2:1 = 75% Study 25% Party
2:2 = 50% Study 50% Party
Third = 25% Study 75% Party
Pass = I KANT RITE

Study rate = Employability rate :)

This isn't true in the strictest sense.

Dunno where you live, but the vast majority of areas in the country do *NOT* have a ton of computer science and basic computer tech graduates. Now, I live in Southern California,
right outside the city of LA. HERE there are a goodly amount of people with computer science or otherwise somewhat technical computer training. But that isn't the issue, how
many people there are applying for jobs that have a degree or claim computer proficiency.

There aren't a great deal of people that are even *remotely* competent, or have qualifications to show it. This includes a bachelor's in computer science - unless you do some
*serious* work while you're in school, and or go to a technical/engineering school, most computer science degrees aren't worth much since you don't do much. You're literally
better off taking the time out of school and finding a job in a computer lab, as tech support or in a call center and teaching yourself coding and/or working toward certifications.

Earn a CCNA. There are a lot of community colleges around the country that offer Cisco Networking Academy coursework, and you can take the classes for super cheap and be finished with
your training for the certification in two consecutive semesters, if you learn the material and do the hands-on work.

That not enough? Earn a CCNP after it. Through many of the same community colleges (less so than those offering CCNA work, though) you can spend two more consecutive semesters finishing
the training for that. In two years, and not too much money out of your pocket, you can be pretty darn employable even if you have no other experience or papers to your name but your cert,
and expect to make a good 40-45k+/yr. You aren't going to get that fresh out of school and wet behind the ears with a bachelor's in CS anymore, and you'll be doing it in half the time.
If you're smart and dedicated, you could even go and get a CCIE if you studied and practiced hard enough. That's almost guaranteed to be worth more and looked at more favorably than a
graduate degree in computer science.

There aren't a ton of people getting more than low level computer certs (A+ and basic MCPs, and web design, anyone?), and certainly not Cisco certs. If you want to program, there are MCP
and MCSD level certifications Microsoft offers in Visual Basic, Visual C++ and C#. Having one of those, and no expectation to grab a top tier design position will net you a job pretty quick,
and you'll have coding ability you wouldn't develop until the end of your graduate work in Computer Science, if then. And again, by the time your peers in school finished their degree, you'd
have a good 2 years of job experience and a significantly higher pay rate than they can match for a while.

The issue isn't so much that there is a flood of people in the computer fields, as none of them know *shit* when they graduate and all vie for relatively low tier jobs upon entering the job market.
If you got the training to develop the proficiency needed for some decent certs and got them, you'd be fine and shouldn't want for a job, as long as you're willing to be flexible.

It just is not fair. Kids today aren't entitled, they are screwed over. The older generation didn't have to take bullshit like this. There were no trouble getting a job back then, especially not for college graduates. Things have gone quite a bit downhill since then.

Bull. There has never been trouble getting a job. There has always been trouble getting a job you want.

Meanwhile the advantage that college graduates once had has evaporated due to the change in supply/demand. Now that so many people are college graduates, being a college graduate is no longer special. Doubly so now that curricula and grade-inflation and such have taken their toll. When my father got his MBA, one of the requirements for graduating was to visit a real-world company and solve a random serious real-world problem it had.

This is exactly the theory under which community colleges like Monroe name their degrees. This gal has a 2-year associate's degree called "Bachelor of Business Administration" Compare that with a degree in "Computer Technology" or "Industrial Engineering Technology." The names are very similar to four year degrees. A naive 20 year old is susceptible to the line that you can get the skills employers want to work in [impressive field] with salaries up to $50,000, in a business-friendly environment; that by cutting out extraneous classes like English and History, you can graduate in just 2 years rather than 4. If they don't have someone there to point out that "Engineering Technology" is different than "Engineering" or that "Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Information" is different than "Bachelor of Science in Business Administration," they can end up buying something very different than what they expected.

CC can be a good option. An AS or AA can definitely be a step towards a better career, and can provide a useful skill set, but it's a different route than a four year degree, and I don't think that distinction is always made clear to potential students.

Just found this article [theskichannel.com] in which the "Ski Channel" is going to offer her a job:

"Either Ms Thompson is a cunning out of the box thinker and we want her," said Bellamy, "or she isn't, and her position would not last long. Either way, the law suit would no longer be clogging up the courts because there are now no damages."

Five weeks "built up" over how many years? Can you actually take all of that 5 weeks in one year?

There's a difference between "5 weeks built up over the last 4" and "5 weeks off per year"

Wow, I never realised that vacation time in the US was so bad as to make 25 paid leave days per year sound so incredulous...

It's really not uncommon in Europe to have that much annual leave...and yes, every year.

-- Pete.

Standard in the US is 10 days, to start. If you're lucky that'll build up to 15-20 in few years.

At a lot of places if you get sick, your sick days come out of your vacation time.

I am sorry, but where are you?

Sorry, many parts of Europe have apprenticeship programs, etc where people still do low-level technical jobs.

I call BS in your argument!

While you might not like socialism, what it does do is give menial jobs a pretty hefty wage. Instead of the scamming that goes on in North America.

I am here in Switzerland and our cleaning lady makes 39 CHF (about 35 USD) per hour! We can't find anything less.

Econ 101? Here's Econ 102: It's far better for ordinary people to live in an economy with full employment and moderate-high inflation than suffer higher unemployment via the IS-LM [wikipedia.org] curve so that a few people with access to "capital" don't see it decline in value so quickly.

Let me say that again: inflation is a good thing so long as it's driven by wages.

That's why our economy in the United States took off like a rocket after World War II: sure, part of it was that everyone else was bombed out. But a larger factor was four years of sustained full employment at high wages had transferred quite a bit of wealth and created a robust middle that would only start to be systematically dismantled when Reagan took office.

Apparently you have no connection with reality what so ever
Norway ~3%
Sweden ~9%
Denmark ~5%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate [wikipedia.org] How you get this to 2% for "Scandinavia" is beyond me. And remember that Norway has a fairly low unemployment due it that thing called oil.

Usually a 4.0 is in the 100-94 range. Even lower depending on grade scaling. When I took my thermodynamics class I had an A with only an 89 average. Granted the class average was ~60. Getting 100% is impossible for even the best students.

Our 15% unemployment is a fake number. double it for the real number.

the US 15% number is from only those that are collecting unemployment. Those that had it run out are not counted. The numbers are easily double what they are reporting.

In my years of working in the US, I never had a job with any vacation time in the 1st year other that normal holidays.

Minimum in the UK is 28 days (that includes the 8 public holidays, so it's 20 days if you aren't required to work on those days).

That's illegal here.

That point would be which one?

Well, last I checked, the US unemployment rate was substantially higher than the 3% of Norway or the 5% of Denmark, both of which are "socialist" countries. And if you use uncooked numbers, it's higher than the 9% of Sweden, too.

The former government loved the term "open unemployment rate", because that number was always substantially lower than the true unemployment rate.

So, at best, I think it's safe to say that at least the US and Sweden are probably about on par as far as unemployment goes (at least, they were... who knows, these days).

Glad to see I was right about the cooked numbers, though. I'm amazed anyone even bothers to look at government unemployment numbers, these days. They're nothing more than propaganda.

And how is your economics?

One thing you'll frequently see is the US complaining about "dumping" of products with the counter claim that the country "dumping" isn't. As it turns out, both claims are true because the cost calculations done by both sides are different.

In order to produce products, you need 3 things that you have to pay for.

Infrastructure - Things like factories, machines.
Employees - The people who perform the work.
Materials - What is converted into the product.

And in order to make money, you need to sell the product.

I'll use the following values for this example:

F = Fixed costs to support Infrastructure.
W = Wages to pay employees
M = Material costs for producing the product.
S = Price of sold product.

The key thing to remember is that firing employees in the US is fairly easy. However, in many Europian countries, it's much harder. So during economic down turns, the unemployment in the US climbs fairly rapidly, while the unemployment in Europe climbs much slower.

So US companies tend to consider the incremental cost of producing a product to be:

W + M

While Europian companies tend to consider the incremental cost of producing a product to be:

M

and if you're attempting to survive an economic downturn, the main priority of a company is to last as long as possible without running out of their cash reserves and going out of business. So they do what they can to reduce their fixed costs and also do what they can to produce income.

In the US, fixed costs can be quickly reduced by firing "excess" employees and only retaining enough to produce the amount of product that can be sold. However, most Europian companies can't fire their employees so what they do is reduce the cost of their product to try to maximize their income.

So when companies in the US see an Europian company selling a product for less than (W + M), they'll accuse that company of "dumping". While the Europian company will claim it's not dumping because the product is being sold for more than M.

This entire point of this whole article is to point out that due to legal reasons, you'll find the unemployment in Europe to be frequently lower than the unemployment in the US. However, that unemployment figure does not mean that your economy is in better shape. It simply means that the legal structure means that different decisions have to be made to deal with the economy.

I implore you to read this article, then reconsider your argument: Parable of the Broken Window [wikipedia.org].

Im not saying there weren't positive effects from the war, there were (more women working, beginning of equal rights for minorities, strengthening of the military-industrial complex), however they could have easily happened without a war.

Grand total is 33 days including public holidays.

I also have the option to "buy" (i.e. take unpaid leave) for up to a further two weeks.

A (now defunct) US based company I used to work for gave us 20 + public holidays, I think because that was the legal minimum. They gave their US employees 12.

To clarify this, many companies combine sick time and vacation time so that you can use your time off however you need to. It's a positive for people that rarely get sick, because they get a few more days of vacation, but it's a big problem for people more prone to illness. It also tends to create the mindset of not wanting to stay home when you're sick because you're effectively losing vacation time. You do get the same number of days off total, though; instead of 15 vacation days and 5 sick days, you'd just get 20 days off.

I think the theoretical minimum is about 3%. That represents people who are piss-poor at finding work, people who are actively transitioning (willing or not) and those just entering the workforce.

Stores in my city are occassionally closed "due to lack of staff".

Universities are selling a product. As with any merchant, their success is measured by their ability to provide a service that people want at a price they are willing to pay, while making a profit at it.

The thing is, their customer base has changed radically over the years. Society now requires an increasing number of specialized and intellectually demanding skills. Universities are, whether we like it or not, the place where those skills are bought and sold. This has transformed the university from a playground for the wealthy (who need not care about mundane things like employability) to the gateway to a decent career path for a huge segment of society.

This transformation means employment is now THE critical aspect of this education, not the well-rounded liberal arts education that was the goal of its former customer base. Universities know this well, which is why they market themselves with an eye towards their customers' future career prospects.

That's not to say that people don't care about the liberal arts aspect. We do... but for most university students, it's no longer the driving force behind undergraduate education. Few are willing to put themselves into years' worth of debt simply to become a more well-rounded individual. They do it so they can have a better career and quality of life. The liberal part of the education is simply a bonus.

It's just a case of balancing the breadth of a liberal education with the depth of an employable career discipline. That way we get an education that is both liberal and useful.

And I needn't bother to refute the arrogance that assumes everyone should simply hand over their hard-earned money for a class without an explanation of why it's worth the cost. It is incumbent on the seller of a product to make its value clear, not a potential buyer. The annals of history are littered with defunct businesses whose clearly wonderful products could find no buyers.

Her complaint is that the college advertises full-time job placement help and she is not receiving that service. That's not the same as claiming that she is suing because she does not have a job. The fact that she doesn't have a job yet given her "outstanding credentials" is evidence cited to support her claim that the college is not providing the services they advertised.

From a strictly legal standpoint false advertisement is a legitimate reason to sue. I just don't think she has much of a case.

Personally, though I understand her frustration, I think her attitude stinks. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA from a top three engineering school (the public one that doesn't inflate grades) with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. During my studies many people commented that I would have no problem finding a job right out of college which I thought was great but also unimportant since there wasn't anything else I really liked studying or doing. Unfortunately, for me I graduated in 2001 right after the dot com bubble burst. *Soup Nazi voice* No job for YOU!!! I had to work my ass off to get an unpaid internship then bust my butt to move up from there to better companies and better jobs. It took me almost 7 years to finally get my career where I want it to be. In my experience, if you want results you're better off improving the things you can (yourself) then trying to change things you can't control.