flood of 1.3 million graduates to join a stagnant work force ...

A misled generation graduates to a future behind the counter | By Brian Till | Originally published June 6, 2007

Last month, author Barbara Ehrenreich gave a chilling address to the Class of 2007 at Haverford College near Philadelphia. She told the graduates, "At the moment you accept your diploma today, you will have an average debt of $20,000 and no health insurance. You may be feeling desperate enough to take whatever comes along. Some of you will get caged in cubicles until you're ejected by the next wave of layoffs."

She continued: "Others - some of the best and brightest of you, in fact - will still be behind a counter in Starbucks or Borders three years down the road."
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To be clear, the students Ms. Ehrenreich damned to Starbucks and Borders weren't graduating from a community college or a second-tier state school. Haverford is one of the country's more respected small, liberal arts schools. Almost 90 percent of its students graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.
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But with the Department of Education predicting a flood of 1.3 million graduates into the job market to join the work force of a stagnant economy this summer, many graduates will find it hard to envision those few leaders among all the bartenders and third-shift managers blocking the view.

A study by the Economic Mobility Project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that men in their 30s have a median annual income of about $35,000. Thirty years ago, American men in their 30s were making 12.5 percent more, their median annual income closer $40,000 (after adjusting for inflation).

At Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduates were lectured on our nation's similarities to the Roman Empire. Amherst President Anthony Marx cautioned, "If we do not learn from the limits of our victories, we risk the fate of Rome." ...