I am upset I missed this event. Forgot to add it to the calendar.

I was really disturbed by the response of the PD-reading public to their coverage of this event - see example below. This makes me wonder how big is the generation gap these days, versus other times in history... anyone know any metrics or studies on that?

Crybaby generation needs to suck it up
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Book reviewer John Dicker (Forum, Feb. 12) agrees with authors Anya Kamenetz and Tamara Draut ("Generation Debt") that the new generation of college graduates has accumulated huge debts and the future looks bleak.

We, of the "greatest generation" are not sympathetic; their problems pale in comparison to the almost overwhelming obstacles of the Great Depression and World War II.

Yet we survived and overcame the odds. We won the war, rebuilt Europe and Japan, educated more young men and women than any other generation, built schools, colleges and universities, and suburbia and infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. And we prospered individually.

Our successors, the "baby boom" generation, continued on the path we prepared and produced the present "baby bust" generation. I am confident that the present generation will have the ingenuity and good sense to prosper likewise.

Newell D. Sanders Olmsted Township

Please spare me the bleatings of Anya Kamenetz and Tamara Draut - and poor "Cindy" with her $10,000 in debt and only $20,000 in income.

I graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1973 with $10,000 in bills and started with a job paying "only" $10,000 a year. Yet I still managed to pay off my debt without whining about how cruel and tough and generationally elitist society had become.

Stop crying in your lattes, get a job and some experience, work yourself out of debt and up to a more substantial salary, and grow up. If you don't like the economic circumstances and the political climate that has helped to create the current business environment and career options, then get off your rear ends and vote to change that world.

Matt Nousak Geneva

    Nice to see this come up in the last viewed today. I attended both the CSU Forum and then went again to bring my husband with me to Mac's Backs. We bought the book for our son who headed off to college this past fall. He read it in one sitting and then chose the college that would graduate him with less debt (so far).

    Back home after the first quarter in Chicago, he has been convening and comparing schools and communities with his buds for the last several weeks. They all say, "There is no place like the Heights". These kids had acess to amazing diversity, a stunning array of arts and culture and libraries beyond comparison. You just don't know til you leave how great a place Northeast Ohio is in the great scheme of things. He and his friends have ended up in small college towns (Athens and Springfield, Ohio), mid sized college towns (Columbus, Ohio) and large urban areas (Boston and Chicago). None of them chose NYC -- basically it was too expensive to live there, and while in school, they would simply be frustrated by their inability to access the cultural activity that abounds there. They all say that they had grown up hearing that Cleveland was the pit, but now they aren't so sure. It looks pretty unique in its own ways and pretty cool for college kids who aren't 21 yet. Ease of access to the Museum and national touring bands as well as the Beachland and local galleries ranks high among these 18 and 19 year olds. They didn't know that there are many kids out there who are so narrow since they grew up being exposed to so many wide ranging activities.

    Here's hoping that 4 years or 6 years from now, Cleveland will be a place that they can return to for work. And here's hoping that they will not be returning to get on the moving sidewalk of first job experiences that Draut describes. that Cleveland is a great place to rear children has already been tested. The kids themselves have spoken on that one...