And of course there is a tremendous social aspect to privilege. College education is basically socialization, after all.

But if it'd make you more comfortable and my argument clearer, I can swap out “privilege” for “advantage.” The point is the same: that a college degree is a big boon to the job seeker, and that the negative impact of a down economy on the college-educated job seeker is thus comparatively minor, so they can damn well stop complaining.

–On students being forced into the workplace by parents: in my experience, the sets “students who work for money” and “students who require money” are basically congruent. But maybe my experience is skewed.

–On the NYT: actually I tend to think that the Times doesn't have to seek these people out, because they populate the bubble Times style writers tend to live in. That top 2-3% is heavily clustered around New York to begin with, and our fashionable correspondents (many of them Harvard Crimson and Yale Daily News vets) are not exactly going to hang out in Spanish Harlem, so do the math. Besides, it's not as if Times authors or editors give any indication whatsoever that they find this narrative anything other than earnestly pitiable.

Thanks again. But as you've probably already guessed, I don't agree with you entirely, though I think I get the spirit of where you are trying to go with this piece.

1. I never said that economic hardship is a binary or a dichotomy. I too understand it to be a spectrum, but I think it is much more fluid and complex then you have described it. I think it's always problematic to take only two factors of two situations and assert privilege based on a perceived relative comparison. Economic hardship is much more complex and multi-faceted than what would appear to be just a matter of “college vs. car wash”. You argue that if two persons are taking care of ailing parents and one is in college and the other is washing cars, the one in college is automatically more privileged. Not so. Privileged how? What assumptions does one first need to make in order to draw that conclusion? The presumption that going to college is “better” than washing cars? For whom? The presumption that if someone had a choice to go to college in lieu of washing a car that one would clearly choose college? And why is that? What informs the privilege you assert there? Where is the “betterness” factor distinguishing the privilege from the disadvantage? Why is it assumed that college is something “better” rather than something different?

2. If you want to go into comparative privilege as it relates to economic hardship, you'll need to look at more factors than occupation. Washing cars is not necessarily an indication of one's privilege, networth, or background. You need more information. In fact, a person washing cars could come from a wealthy background, with an immense networth, while the opposite might be true for a college student. What you may perceive as economic hardship could be simply a side-job, a hobby, a past-time, or a preferred occupation. It is not an indication of his or her debt to income ratio or economic solvency. There are plenty of persons who work low-paying and perceived “undesirable” occupations because they simply enjoy the work or want to do it, not because they “have to.” In that regard, the person washing the car might be more privileged than the college student. There are also a whole set of factors that go into economic distribution and notions of privilege, including race, gender, disability status, and sexual identity (to name just a few)…

There are even more possibilities in the regard of privilege that I haven't touched on. Circumstances are not always as they may seem…

3. Privilege refers to the “unearned,” “undeserved,” and “un-asked” statuses and advantages afforded to a given individual or group based on a number of given categories. It is a capillary force in social relations and flows unilaterally from perceptions of advantage to disadvantage. For privilege to exist, it takes a degree of implicit agreement, acceptance, and recognition of standards and norms. And it takes social construction, as well as institutional and structural enforcement of those standards and norms for privilege to manifest. This answers the questions of: How is it that we've come to recognize privilege in the first place? How do we measure it? Privilege is societal. And it is not as simple or as uniformed as you have posited it to be. I feel that you've misused this word to defend your ideas.

4. When I was talking about the luxury of being able to work unpaid internships, I was talking about that separately from the option of spending the summer in one parents' basement. Regardless of class, if one's parents mandate that she or he must work (for whatever reason) during the summer, the option of spending the summer in the basement is closed (that's what I meant about the “across lines of class” comment).

5. To the extent that you are referring to the employment process being competitive, uncertain, and dependent on the economic health of the job environment, I'll concede your point that “no college student should expect their degree to be an admission ticket to a comfortable job.” Indeed it is important to be realistic. But all of that notwithstanding, insofar as degrees are regarded as qualifications, credentials, and experiences toward a comfortable job, I think the expectation of the graduating college student (regardless of class) is not misguided, unrealistic, or unreasonable.

—-I get your point about the particular voice of the college student portrayed in the New York Times. But you have to acknowledge that the NY Times plays a role in actively seeking out this particular college student to advance the kind of displeasing narrative that you take issue with in your post.

“I really like your post, and my quibble is actually really off-topic but at any rate: I always tend to wrinkle my nose a bit when people extol the virtues of “[sweating] in a warehouse or a kitchen … and learning what a dollar is actually worth.”

I don't mean that you or I as college graduates deserve or are “entitled to” better; I just think that this particular bit of wisdom is (however unintentionally) sometimes a way of sugarcoating a very bitter pill, namely (to be hugely melodramatic about it) being yoked to exploitative capitalist wage-slavery.

Even my meager bit of vicarious experience with the ins and outs of an “honest job” gives me the sense that calling it “honest” is just a way of valorizing its soul-crushingness. The funny thing is I'm not even one to talk – being a real-world-sheltered academic type – but I feel like those who *should* be talking are the most likely to encounter the “you must have forgotten what a dollar is worth” rebuttal.

I certainly see the wisdom in the recommendation (working an unpleasant job *does* force people like us to learn a thing or two), but I just fear that if the idea is spread around too liberally, we are apt to start glossing over the cases in which people – of whatever socioeconomic background – really *shouldn't* darn well suck it up.

Anywho, like I said, kind of orthogonal to your good point, but it's what I've been thinking about lately.”

As a quick response to Roland's valid concerns, I don't mean to glamorize or romanticize difficult work — there's nothing fun or ideal about it, and people of every class have every right to aspire to a comfortable white-collar or unionized job. My intent was to confine that comment strictly to people who otherwise would have no idea that difficult work even exists, and to make clear that in a down economy, college grads don't have a free pass.