For decades, the post-grad dilemma of no housing and no job has sent Columbia seniors back home to their suburban towns with a fancy degree and a lack of direction. While various circles of philosophers and students with BAs in Philosophy who expected themselves to be anomalous and able enough to avoid such a fate have pondered the mechanics of this system, no one has agreed on which problem to tackle first: the job or the apartment.
The dilemma routinely plays out as follows: the unemployed post-grad cannot live in the city, thus rendering themselves unhoused. However, the unhoused graduate cannot eventually obtain a job in the city due to their lack of residency, therefore making a city job impossible and rendering them unemployed.
While the answer to this chicken-or-egg question has been a subject of centuries-long debate, one Columbia student believes they have found a solution: a rich parent on the board of a company who can secure the hypothetical grad both a job and a monthly allowance to pay for their housing while they “interview” amongst their nepo connections. Those graduates without such a parent must suffer, returning to both their high school service job and their childhood bedroom-now-turned-office.
