students who emerge with bachelor’s degrees must borrow to
finance their college education,
up from less than half in the early 1990s, according to a recent
New York Times investigation.
Only about half of all Americans
between the ages of 18 and 24
are now employed, according to
an analysis by the Pew Research
Center. Many college graduates
are stuck in jobs that do not require their degrees.
“I don’t know what I’m going
to do,” says Andrew Nelms, 25,
who graduated three years ago
with a bachelor’s in counseling
psychology from Toccoa Falls
College, a Christian school in
Georgia. He carries $22,000
in student loan debt, a burden
he confronts with his barista
job at Caribou Coffee, where he
earns $9 an hour.
Nelms lays this out over
lunch at the Remedy Diner, a
vegetarian restaurant in a gritty
neighborhood in downtown Raleigh. The cocktail list features
something called the “Anxiety
Antidote.” Nelms has been ingesting more traditional medicine — antidepressants, which
a doctor recently described for
the stress that dominates his
life. His college degree has so
far produced a resume mostly
limited to stints at Applebee’s
and Caribou coffee.
“It’s caused me a whole lot of
anxiety,” he says. “It’s hard to
even find an internship in this
area, even an unpaid one. It just
sucks to think that I’ve wasted
the last six years of my life on,
well, nothing. I knew it was
going to be tough, but I didn’t
know how difficult.”
He has thought about nursing school, but the prospect of
taking on more FV'Bg&