Hey Colleges: Stop Asking Broke Grads for Money

At the end of senior year, Alexander Aciman made the mistake of donating $25 to his college's alumni fund. Now, he knows that's "a lot like inviting a vampire into one's home," he writes at the New Republic. He's now constantly bombarded by calls and emails begging for more. But what bugs him isn't the spam; "it is the fundamental unseemliness of universities' relentless solicitations ... in a country where the current balance of outstanding student loans is 1/15 of the nation's entire GDP."

When Aciman graduated in 2012, more than half of recent grads were unemployed, underemployed, or working jobs unrelated to their majors. They're broke, but schools keep soliciting even tiny donations because graduate donations affect a school's all-important Princeton Review rankings. If schools really want grads to give, maybe they "should develop programs that actively help find employment for students," so they have something to give. "If schools feel entitled to our money after graduation, then we should feel similarly entitled to jobs." Click for Aciman's full column. (More college stories.)