michael_cain's Journal: Accepted!

This week I heard from the University of Colorado, and I've been accepted as a Ph.D. student by the Economics Dept. Technically, the registrar's office could still bounce me, but that seems unlikely at this point. Such an action would appear to be, among other things, an opportunity for an age discrimination lawsuit. More about age discrimination in a moment. The main point for this entry is that now I'll have to make a real decision about the graduate school thing.

I've spent a fair amount of time wondering about why the whole prospect makes me nervous. One of the big concerns is finances, of course. It's one thing to undertake four years of college when you're young and single; it's another to do it when you're older, married, with two children (one already in college, one with one year left in high school), a house, three cars, etc. My wife Mary is encouraging me, and has taken a part-time job to generate some cash flow in addition to the seperation money and savings, but this adventure is not fully funded.

Another fear is that this is an admission that I'm unemployable in my former field. I built a career by being a generalist; current job openings in cable and telecom in the Denver area appear to be for specialists to fit a particular need. I worked myself into a position of providing analysis to senior managers to support their decisions; it's not the type of position that you can step into from the outside, you spend years working your way into it from inside the company. Add to that the fear that I'll also be unemployable in my new field in a few years due to age.

Which brings me to the topic of age discrimination. It feels odd, to say the least, to find that you have become a member of a group which is discriminated against to an extent that makes "protection" necessary. I'm an old guy now -- over 45 is the usual dividing line. When an employer lays off a group of people, they have to worry about de facto age discrimination. When Comcast showed me the door, they were required to provide me with a complete listing of the age and title of all the other people getting laid off, in case I wanted to investigate age discrimination. In theory, if CU had turned me down, they ran some risk of me challenging that decision on the same basis. I'm not very comfortable with the thought that I could take that route to get what I want.

OTOH, I think that the country is in trouble in the not too distant future if age discrimination is a real thing. Within a few years it appears that the baby boom generation (I'm at the tail end of it) will begin to break the bank on Social Security. The politicians have promised it to us for years, but there's no way they're going to be able to actually deliver. The answer, various experts keep saying, is to keep the boomers in the work force and off of SS. I think that there will need to be very substantial changes in the way that careers can be structured in order to make that happen.

Looking ahead, I'll find myself in my mid-50s with a new degree. I will not be interested in moving across the country, or working 80-hour weeks, or moving up the management ladder. I won't need to command a massive salary, though, as I've already accumulated much of the wealth needed for old age -- a house and an adequate (I think) retirement account. Depending on whether Comcast honors the promises that were made by the company they bought, I may need health insurance benefits. IMO, the way that business in this country structures its career paths, it may be a rather difficult fit.