There is a normal business tenet that as costs increase so
does the price of the product or service to the consumer. Very seldom does that
cost get absorbed by efficiencies or carve into profit. Anyone who gets monthly
bills knows what I mean.
This leads me to an article sent to me by a friend of mine
Chuck Lomax. The article is by Anthony Balderrama of careerbuilder.com called
Generation Y: Too demanding at work? So what is the correlation? This segment –
Alison
Bailin, 27, also believes her generation wants to see a significant return on
years of education. “College expenses have skyrocketed, leaving many of us
in debt,” says the account executive. “Many career fields require one
year or more of a [usually] unpaid internship, so we are joining the work force
with a year or more experience than many previous generations.”
This might be the first time that college graduates have
tried to overtly pass the cost of college on to their employer. And the final
sentence justifies it. But here is the kicker; is the return on investment
greater than before? According to the article it is.
“Companies
desperately want to be a part of the Web 2.0/user-generated content, MySpace,
YouTube phenomenon. Who better to guide that shift than Gen Y?” asks Matt
Dornic, 26, president of the public relations firm 3 Dog Communications.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that college costs have
increased because of the emphasis on Web 2.0. If anything, the second quote
implies that the skills would have been obtained regardless of the college
education. So who is benefitting from the college cost increase? Most likely,
the colleges themselves and maybe that is a good thing. Optimistically, maybe
colleges have the long term in mind and the programs they are establishing are
the foundation for something even greater than what we see now. But as I said
in another post titled Does College Have a Future?, I think there are plenty of
options out there for students and even more for business.
Working Thoughts 