Exactly how many things are wrong with this article in the Times? It's about a college graduate who (we're told) can't get a job. Only, um, it turns out he can — he just doesn't think it's too attractive.

Mr. [Scott] Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean's award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a resume and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.

(Getting a foot in the door is dead-end work? Huh? And the average salary right now is $42K — so $40K isn't exactly bad for a first position, with only a BA.)

I've searched for other variants and commentary on this story. As usual, newspapers all over the country echo the Times — the Times tells them what to print, and they print it. But nobody, critical or supportive seems to be asking what seems to me the most basic question:

What's his major?

If I were the journalist, it would be the first thing I would ask. I strongly suspect the author knows (how could he not? — he lists the areas of study of Scott's family members!) but isn't including it because it would weaken his point. If the guy majored in history or literary criticism — award or none — it's not even remotely surprising that "insurance adjuster" would be a typical entre into the work force. Without knowing his degree, we can't judge the difficulty of the alleged injustice, can we?

But I don't see any commentators noting this obvious omission.

We're so gullible and easy to manipulate.

The only hint I could find was on page three:

Scott Nicholson also has connections, of course, but no one in his network of family and friends has been able to steer him into marketing or finance or management training or any career-oriented opening at a big corporation, his goal. The jobs are simply not there.

Okay. He believes he's equally trained for "finance" or "marketing", despite the fact these require vastly different mindsets and abilities. Uh-huh. And, barring that, he should be in "management training", despite the fact the article gives us no evidence that he's ever managed anything before, or even held down a regular, mundane job. But, um, he got a BA (in something) so he should be managing someone. As his first real job role. So it would seem his major is fairly, shall we say, non-specific. Psychology, perhaps? Sociology? Political science?

By the way, I'm not implying this graduate is lazy: not at all — according to the article, he's actually doing odd jobs. More likely, I suspect the problem is that he's been sold a false bill of goods. (I've seen it before: the new graduate can't imagine why he's not hired on immediately as manager or VP of something.)

And if the kid does want to hold out for a better offer, and his parents want to support that — that's their business. Perhaps he'll even find one — how would I know? Everyone has the right to make such bets. I don't even know what his major is in. But I do know that the tone of the coverage nauseates. For example:

"Going it alone," "earning enough to be self-supporting" — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends. Of the 20 college classmates with whom he keeps up, 12 are working, but only half are in jobs they "really like." Three are entering law school this fall after frustrating experiences in the work force, "and five are looking for work just as I am," he said.

Paying for yourself is an "awkward concept"? The Times journalist thinks it is important that we know how many of his peers "really like" their jobs. (I have "really liked" only a fraction of the jobs I've held — and, weirdly, consider myself really fortunate to have had a shot at those.) Three friends had "frustrating" experiences with doing real work and thus want to become... wait for it... lawyers! (And if that doesn't pan out they can always become politicians, no doubt!)

Feelings seem to play a rather large role in this author's narrative.

"I don't think I fully understood the severity of the situation I had graduated into," he said... And then he veered into the optimism that, polls show, is persistently, perhaps perversely, characteristic of millennials today. "I am absolutely certain that my job hunt will eventually pay off," he said....

"They are better educated than previous generations and they were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children," said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director. That helps to explain their persistent optimism, even as they struggle to succeed...

The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is north of $175,000, have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son....

The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists. Young men in particular lost a sense of direction, Glen H. Elder Jr., a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, found in his study, "Children of the Great Depression." In some cases they were forced into work they did not want — the issue for Scott Nicholson.

Forced to do work one doesn't want? What are we running here, a gulag?

Is this generation really better-educated? They certainly have more years in school, but it appears the amount they've learned in those years may actually have fallen, if international educational comparisons are to be trusted.

And wouldn't their "optimism" (high self-regard, really) be somehow related to the self-esteem movement into which educators have immersed them? One minute, he admits he didn't correctly understand something, but then says, despite that, he is "absolutely certain" he made the right choice.

Well, that's the great thing about reading the New York Times. It's always a fun journey into a magical world — a world often totally unlike the world I encounter every day. A world where almost every clerk, repairman, plumber, mechanic, and tech writer in the work force is doing work they truly love and have dreamed of since childhood. Except a few unfortunate kids, who might have to take jobs which aren't, in the first attempt, their dream positions.

And who should we model things after?

"I view what is happening to Scott with dismay," said the grandfather, who has concluded, in part from reading The Economist, that Europe has surpassed America in offering opportunity for an ambitious young man...

Yep. If we want to solve this problem, we need to emulate Spain. Or France. Or the UK. (So says The Economist!)

Wait — isn't that what we were supposed to have been doing already?