Students of the Great Recession

Students of the Great Recession

Article Review

David Leonhardt is associated with The New York Times as Washington bureau chief. His article, Students of the Great Recession, published in The New York Times Magazine on May 7, 2010 (Leonhardt, 2010).

In this article, the author has compared time of The Great Depression with the current Recession. The comparison focuses on effects of the economic downturn on high school and college education. The author has discussed factors leading to increase in high school enrollments during the Depression period. He has also discussed factors leading to increase in college enrollments during the recent Recession. He emphasizes that now enrollment is not sufficient to raise the level of education. College completion is as important as college access. He discusses initiatives for college completion as well as mentions constraints to its achievement. Stakeholders need to adopt aggressive strategy for enhancing college completion rate.

The Great Depression started in 1929. It preceded Second World War that began in 1939. It was a worldwide economic crisis that resulted in widespread unemployment, reduced industrial production, and decline in stock prices. The Depression started when there was a stock market crash on October 29, 1929. It was a day, when Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 23 percent, and the market loss in value was between 8 billion and 9 billion US Dollars. This day is also called Black Tuesday. Capitalism theory supports free market economy based on demand and supply of commodities. It discourages government's role to regulate the business. Market players compete with one another for maximization of profit. Depression weakens the idea of capitalism and encourages the expansion of government as the essential overseer of markets. Governments have to introduce bailout packages so that companies could survive and avoid declaring default (Samuelson, 2012).

The Great Depression changed ...