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Saturday, May 21, 2011

Do You Believe the Numbers? 85% of Grads Move Home

I keep seeing this everywhere: 85% of grads will be moving in with mom and dad.

Even Frugal Son--grad as of yesterday!--passed on the statistic. He is skeptical. Does that mean that, like Frugal Son who will be teaching English abroad next year, the grad "lives at home" for a few months in the summer?

I do hear about grads moving home. I wonder if we should see this not as a mark of shame but as a shrewd financial choice.

As always, remember this famous tome, in print for many years.

Do you know of a lot of grads moving home? Or grads who never left?

5 comments:

Eugene Goodkind said...

I would put a little money on that statistic being exagerated.
However it does bely a more probable if indefinate reality that a lot of grads are moving back home, or never left.

This is both shrewd and sad... Shrewd is often dictated by reality. Just as necesity is the mother of invention.

SewingLibrarian said...

My niece is back home, but I don't think she is planning to stay for too long. She doesn't have a job yet, and is planning to go to grad school. But she will have to find a job because I don't think my brother and SIL are planning to finance her grad school education. Good thing: no college debt. She lived at home for two years while attending. Bad thing: not much job experience and a major in English.

Funny about Money said...

Hm. Given the number of my undergraduate students who are living in their own apartments and paying their way with jobs, I kinda doubt it. Seems unlikely that many of these young people, who are establishing careers and independent lives while they're going to school, would move back in with mome and dad unless some catastrophe forced them to do so.

But then, junior college students may form a relatively small proportion of the group who finally get to be graduates of four-year colleges and universities.

Shelley said...

Nope. Don't believe they got a sample (whatever the size) that is representative of all college graduates. If they had, that would say that 85% of college graduates couldn't find a job. What in the world would be the point of going to college then? I don't think everyone should necessarily attend university, but I'm pretty skeptical about the reliability of that stat.

Duchesse said...

Félicitations, Frugal S's! Whether stat's true or not, I've observed many more new grads being helped, either by home residence or other subsidy, by my friends and acquaintances. And then there's the BFA who just finished painting our apartment- all he can find now.