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JerseySmarts.com

Lost My Keys – Unbelievable!

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Have you ever lost your keys? As I was getting ready for work this morning I went about my regular routine – did some work for Usable Web Solutions, LLC, brushed my teeth and jumped in the shower, and then dried off and got dressed for work. The next step in the process is to walk out of my bedroom and grab my keys, wallet, and cell phone along the way except this morning there were no keys to be found!

I checked all over my bedroom and I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t find those damn keys anywhere. Then I checked the living room and the kitchen – nothing. Luckily, I had a spare set of keys for my car so I could stop the search and get to the office without being too late. One of my roommates checked his car since we were driving in it last night – nothing. We were driving to one of our former Professor’s house for dinner so I asked the Professor and his wife to check their house this morning and they didn’t find any keys.

This is the most frustrating thing I’ve dealt with, well, since the whole prescription drug thing, but I don’t want to digress. So…if any of you out there on the interwebs know where my keys are, could you tell me? Thanks!

NYT Room for Debate: Student Loans

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One of the great features on the New York Times’ website is their “Room for Debate – A Running Commentary on the News” blog. In this blog, the Times staff brings together experts with different views on a subject to share their points of view. A day or so ago, the topic was “How Much Student Debt Is Too Much?”

The first commentator was Robert Applebaum, a guy whose Facebook group to cancel all student loan debt immediately is one of the few groups that I’m actually a member of on the social networking site. Obviously, I agreed with what Mr. Applebaum had to say in his portion of the commentary (which you can read by clicking above). The next commentator was Dr. James Monks, an associate professor of economics at the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

Dr. Monks took the following stance:

A great deal has been written about the onerous debt levels taken on by some of today’s college students. Much of this discussion grossly overstates the true degree of burden that student loans place on most graduates. An overwhelming majority of students have reasonable and manageable levels of student loans. The typical four-year undergraduate student loan package totals approximately $19,000 — no more than a midsized car. An automobile begins depreciating the minute you drive it off the lot, while one’s college degree is an investment that will garner you a lifetime of higher earnings.

And Dr. Monks goes on and gives a brilliant commentary on many of the student loan debtors graduating today. Anyone who has read my blog over the years knows how important student loans and student loan debt are to me as both a real-life issue and a cause for advocacy. However, I completely agree with Dr. Monks and everything else that he wrote (which, again, you can access by clicking the link above and scrolling down the page). I did, however, feel that it was necessary to contact the good Doctor to let him know that there are people like me out there and that student loans are stifling us. So I sent Dr. Monks this e-mail:

Dr. Monks,

Thank you for your great addition to the New York Times online article regarding student loan debt. Your discussion in the online blog does a great job of dispelling the myth that the average student loan debt is too onerous for today’s college graduates. As anyone with a basic understanding of money can tell you, repaying a $20,000 student loan to earn $800,000 more over a lifetime is well worth the investment.

However, what about the outliers? What about the folks chronicled in this USA Today article:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2006-06-11-debt-cover-usat_x.htm

You’ll notice my picture on that page and I might add that in addition to butchering my quotes to make me sound like I want pity, USA Today listed my total debt at $118,000 when it was really $121,000. I want no pity! I work very hard at a nonprofit financial institution where I provide money to build charter schools in New Jersey’s poorest performing districts. I operate my own small business at night and on the weekends and I’m an Adjunct Professor at the local college. I do everything that I can to generate more income so I can pay down this debt – and it’s working. Since the Summer of 2006 when I started paying back these loans, I’ve repaid $21,000 so that my total outstanding is now at $100,000. I think that’s pretty good.

I think I’m successful, student loan debt aside. However, I needed that debt in order to be the first in my family to complete college and the first to get a Masters Degree. Without those loans, I would not be where I’m at today.

But in the mean time, I’m almost 30 and I still haven’t purchased a house. My truck broke down in the fall and I had to take my mother’s old car as a replacement instead of buying a new one. Trust me, I live on an extremely frugal budget and I don’t waste a dime.

What is your advice for those of us who drive up the average student loan debt? I don’t ask as a condescending reader of the Times, I ask as someone who is impressed with your knowledge of the topic and wishes to pick your brain.

Thanks,
Joe

I changed some of the wording to protect some sensitive information. To Dr. Monks’ great credit, he responded with the following e-mail:

Joe,

I applaud your positive attitude and steadfast approach in trying to reduce your debt. I suggest that you investigate the government’s new income based repayment (IBR) program that caps repayment of federal students loans based on income. Also, you should investigate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that forgives federal student loans after a period of repayment for individuals working in certain public service jobs, such as non-profits. These programs may help to reduce your monthly payments and then reduce your total level of debt, for government initiated student loans. If you have private student loans, I am not aware of any similar programs. I hope this information is helpful. Good luck!

Jim

Now, I was pretty much well aware of these programs prior to e-mailing Dr. Monks, but I have to say that I was impressed with his e-mail. He clearly took the time to answer my questions and address my concerns. I think the larger student loan debate is missing this type of humanity since so many people are too quick to project their own experiences onto the lives of others.

So I take this small space on the internet to say thank you to Dr. Monks for sharing his knowledge with me…and now my readers.

Young Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations

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While reading the latest Nonprofit Quarterly, I came across Paul Schmitz’s piece entitled, “Obama Campaign Provides Lessons for Nonprofits.” If you read this blog, you know that I’m not the biggest fan of the seeming ascension of all things Obama since his election, however I did find this article interesting in that it laid out the five best practices embodied by the Obama campaign. Specifically, I found the fifth best practice to be the most interesting. The fifth best practice was entitled, “Youth leadership.”

In particular, Schmitz says the following:

By virtue of their low pay, long hours, and high-intensity nature, campaigns are always filled with young people. But the Obama campaign recognized and empowered young leadership…The campaign’s all-hands-on-deck approach meant that the top fundraisers and policy advisors – whether they were Goldman Sachs partners, Hollywood stars, or law professors – were expected to canvass door to door and be managed by 22-year-olds. They did so, reporting for duty enthusiastically and building respectful and supportive relationships with these young field organizers rather than questioning them or taking over.

Ah! Talk about music to the young, nonprofit professional’s ears! The biggest problem that I’ve found so far in New Jersey’s nonprofit sector is the entrenchment – for better or for worse – of aging leaders. I cannot stress enough the phrase “for better or for worse” in this statement, though. There are people like Msgr. William Linder in Newark who should be involved in community development at all costs and at all times! This man is a saint for the work that he’s done to bring much needed services to the underserved communities of Newark. The same is true of so many dedicated, older professionals in the state’s nonprofit sector.

However, in my work I find many organizations that have a tremendous glut of young talent who are suppressed under an old style of management. What’s more concerning is that in New Jersey you rarely find high-level executive positions in the nonprofit field being filled by the under 35-year-old crowd. And that’s a shame because it pushes talented folks out of the nonprofit arena and into the private sector. You do see younger folks being named Executive Vice Presidents and Directors of this or that program, but that’s generally in young organizations with less than five employees and they are usually organizations that aren’t too substantial.

What I’ve seen in my own experiences are the elevation of inept individuals with little-to-no leadership skills. Actually – let’s just say that there are NO leadership skills! Anyway, reading Schmitz’s article was nice because it reminded me of how things are supposed to be.

What’s Worse? Getting Laid Off or Cut Back?

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What’s worse? Getting laid off from your job or being forced to take a pay cut as well as unpaid time off? This is the predicament that some employees are facing around the country as the economic crisis continues to waffle its way through the American workforce. The New York Times ran an article on this issue last week – below is an interesting piece from that article:

A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.

And in some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school’s 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.

How about that, huh? You have professors willingly giving up 1% of their pay so that their colleagues at the university will not be fired. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me. The article goes on to talk about how about 30% of the professors have opted into this program and it will generate some $100,000 in savings – enough to save the jobs of “several” university employees.

What is interesting here is that unlike in previous economic downturns and recessions, there are some companies that do not want to cut their existing staff because they know that cutting staff will lose talent. You have to believe that at this point in history, if companies were employing people who were inefficient at their jobs then they would have already been fired. So what’s an employer to do when they need to save money but don’t want to fire anyone?

Send their employees home.

This puts the employee in an awkward predicament. Do you stay with a job that is finding ways to literally nickel and dime you out of a few percentage points on your annual salary or do you look for greener pastures? My stance would be to do both. If your job is sending you home once a week and forcing you in to extended, unpaid furloughs, then you should use that time to find a new place to work, if possible. Look, your job is already telling you that they value you as an employee and that they don’t want to lose you by virtue of your continued employment. If, however, you feel that the reduction in pay is not going to work for your financial needs, then you may as well use the new free time to play the field a bit.

Unnecessary Complications: Ridiculous Student Excuses

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So this is an interesting entry to write and I think you’ll understand why after a few lines (read on). Being an adjunct professor at the local college puts me in a weird situation where I am now the person standing in the front of the classroom. It’s awkward at first, but you get over it in a matter of minutes. In fact, I find that I actually love teaching and if the pay was respectable (it is not), I would pursue it full-time. For some reason I don’t think that it’s logical to pursue a doctorate at this time so I can enter a profession what would require me to take a major pay reduction.

Not a smart move, right?

Anyway, now that I’m the guy in the front of the room I have a much greater appreciation for what professors have to go through. As the title of this entry suggests, I now have an appreciation for some really ridiculous student excuses when it comes to handing in their work on time. Some background information: my students are made aware that an 8 – 10 page paper is due on November 26. And since we don’t have class on that date, I even told the students that since November 26 ends at 11:59pm, they have the entire day to send me the e-mail with their paper attached. What a nice guy!

My students are also made aware that every day the paper is late, the student loses 10 points from their grade (some professors say that you lose a letter grade for each day that a paper is late, but I prefer to use points because it gives the students more time to send in the paper and still earn some credit). All of this is spelled out in the syllabus as is required by the university. So what can you expect between 11:30pm and 11:59pm on November 26? That’s right – tons of e-mails from the students. And I’m fine with that! It’s part of the deal – I get it and I understand completely.

But what I do not understand is when students hand in a paper 5 days late and expect to not lose 50 points from the paper’s final grade. I repeat in every class that if the paper is late, you lose points. Yet when points are lost, students are confused…which, in turn, confuses me. And what really gets me are the students who give me ridiculous excuses as to why the papers are late. The most ridiculous excuse that I get these days is, “I sent my paper by e-mail – I KNOW I did! But I don’t see it in my sent folder, so here it is again. Please do not mark it as late.”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Riiiiiiiiiiiight! And I’m the Easter Bunny! What’s great about these students is that they send you a Microsoft Word document that actually tells you when the document was created. In other words, I can go in to an area of Word and have it tell me that the document was created on November 30. This is the same document that was due four days earlier!

I felt compelled to write this entry because when I was an undergraduate I never handed in anything late. And if I had a problem getting something in on time, it was a real situation and I was sure to get the item in on time by any means necessary. Who spends all of that money to go to college and then doesn’t actually hand in a damn 8 to 10 page paper on time – especially when you have three months to write it?!?

It’s amazing, really.