Do you actually buy into these success stories?

Michael Fisher2 said:In the headline 😁

American journalism👍

when the headline mentions something that isn't even in the actual story...
it’s just what happens when an author can't be bothered to actually write a title...

darkseal9 said:Gets a scholarship in Milan, heads to Brazil on a study abroad program, travels every inch of the place, then thinks, "Hey, let's climb Machiavelli," just to go to some random college there too? Like, seriously, who's footing the bill for all that movie-style nonsense?

You're young, you want to eat, you want to party, and none of that is free. So, who's actually paying for Jacqueline?

Parents? Or maybe some of those European Union handouts meant for eternal students. Massive bureaucracies need things to do, and "lifelong learning" is one of their favorite distractions—study, travel, blah, blah. If you're young, have a decent family, and aren't exactly run-of-the-mill, you can live like this on weird scholarships for projects like studying dam impacts on frogs in Bolivia, or smog effects on butterfly communities in Peru, or just riding horses in Mongolia.http://www.chicagotribune.com/us/news/researching-bolivia-945808Some lucky souls get to research stuff in Switzerland or London and actually live well off it.

boldnomad45 said:Parents? Or maybe some of those European Union handouts meant for eternal students. Massive bureaucracies need things to do, and "lifelong learning" is one of their favorite distractions—study, travel, blah, blah. If you're young, have a decent family, and aren't exactly run-of-the-mill, you can live like this on weird scholarships for projects like studying dam impacts on frogs in Bolivia, or smog effects on butterfly communities in Peru, or just riding horses in Mongolia.http://www.chicagotribune.com/us/news/researching-bolivia-945808Some lucky souls get to research stuff in Switzerland or London and actually live well off it.

🤣🤣🤣
You're honestly spot on, though it wasn't Americans I was hanging out with, just three French guys I used to run with
They were basically living off European Union funds and various grants for six months down in Bolivia, working on this program about frog breeding—which basically meant they spent their time trying to get certain types of frogs to mate
And when I say "working," well, in Bolivia that usually meant showing up maybe three days a week if they weren't stuck being glued to a lab bench, but even then, they wouldn't be starting anything before 10 in the morning
Man, if only I were young and still a student again, and if only I had known these kinds of opportunities existed back then...
I really hope students here in the States are taking full advantage of these projects and exchange programs nowadays, because while I know plenty of examples where they do, it still feels pretty negligible compared to the total student population as a whole...

Richard Lewis16 said:🤣🤣🤣
You're honestly spot on, though it wasn't Americans I was hanging out with, just three French guys I used to run with
They were basically living off European Union funds and various grants for six months down in Bolivia, working on this program about frog breeding—which basically meant they spent their time trying to get certain types of frogs to mate
And when I say "working," well, in Bolivia that usually meant showing up maybe three days a week if they weren't stuck being glued to a lab bench, but even then, they wouldn't be starting anything before 10 in the morning
Man, if only I were young and still a student again, and if only I had known these kinds of opportunities existed back then...
I really hope students here in the States are taking full advantage of these projects and exchange programs nowadays, because while I know plenty of examples where they do, it still feels pretty negligible compared to the total student population as a whole...

It all goes on the CV, even if you didn't actually learn or do anything useful.
I assume universities have their own math regarding why they hand out scholarships to people from the other side of the world. It’s likely just for show, while they pull five times that amount out of their own budget for these supposed "exchanges."
I heard this radio segment about a girl who got a scholarship to India for something completely unrelated to her major. Nothing at all.
Since she was young, she was brutally honest about it. She’d show up at 8 AM because she was told to, but the faculty assistant wouldn't even show up until 11, just asking how life was going. It was treated like a study, but there were no data, no labs, nothing. Just pure chaos. They probably just filed a project report about an international exchange, blah blah blah.😉And pocketed some cash.

Richard Lewis16 said:If you play your cards right and negotiate properly, you’ll still come out ahead
A smart person would probably pull together something like $165,000—maybe through a mortgage on a condo or a house—to set up representation and secure two solid locations... I’d personally aim for one high-traffic shopping mall in a place like Chicago and then somewhere coastal, maybe a beach town where you could lean into that classic Americana vibe with some local flair (you know, that true soul of the coast)... You’d get two machines, and if all goes according to plan, I’d expect to see a full return on investment within about two years
Just speaking in broad strokes, really

And for anyone else wondering what the actual deal is:

I’ve had two massive screw-ups in my life where I should’ve been the first mover:

The first was a coffee roasting setup—I actually laughed at the idea of competing with Starbucks—and the second was electric darts, because I figured there wasn't any real money in it.

I even sniffed around the poker machine scene, but I backed off because I knew the big players would crush me and the headaches wouldn't be worth it.

Goddammit, life. 🤦

Look, we’ve all had our fair share of misses, whether it was messing up the planning or just lacking the guts to take that next big leap when it mattered most...
folks, we really

boldnomad45, and it wasn't even just about that—it was about signing up for those advanced graduate courses later on (which is what happened with those guys), because those extra credits can really give you an edge...
I mean, honestly, those guys actually wanted to build something meaningful; there was even a group that tried to optimize some industrial machinery (students, too) but they spent an entire month just trying to get eyes on the equipment because, well, the paperwork and bureaucracy in this country can slow everything down...
but hey, they can always put on their resumes that they lived and worked on a project out in Bolivia, which definitely jumps off the page and gives them a leg up...

The biggest upside for me, though, is that people get to see the world and experience different cultures without having to blow through a massive amount of cash...

I can't quite wrap my head around why non-European nations would bankroll anyone for such trivialities, but the motivations within the European Union are transparently obvious. Their goal is essentially denationalization—creating a world where young people identify more as Europeans than as Americans, Germans, or whatever else they might be. I’m not suggesting this is some grand conspiracy theory or anything particularly sinister... it's just enough to look at how many couples have met through the ERASMUS program—with recent figures hitting the one million mark—and start connecting the dots.

And honestly? It’s working quite well for them. Sure, you’ll still find nationalists in every single country, but the mere fact that people now lazily lump them all together as "conservatives" rather than distinguishing them as actual conservatives tells you everything you need to know about the current state of consciousness in the European Union.

Take my roommate, for instance—back when I was doing an exchange program in Estonia. He was out there literally advocating for the abolition of national languages in favor of making English the official tongue for every single country in the European Union.
And he wasn't even some sort of wide-eyed, liberal hippie; he simply felt far more like a European than he ever did a German.

The way the European Union operates, they’re going to start cutting off funding for all this nonsense. Honestly, people need to start worrying about whether there’s actually food on the table. We’ve had enough of this performance where everyone pretends to be a "citizen of the world"; now, it’s time to crawl back into our own trenches. The only money left will probably go toward measuring the diameter of cucumbers, because apparently, without that, the European Union can't function 🙂. Measuring cucumbers—that’s basically the heart of Europe right there: figuring out how to look busy doing absolutely nothing, while the taxpayers pick up the tab.

Once the Americans take down the German auto industry with their electric vehicles, this whole thing is going to collapse like a house of cards.

Michelle Davis15 said:The way the European Union operates, they’re going to start cutting off funding for all this nonsense. Honestly, people need to start worrying about whether there’s actually food on the table. We’ve had enough of this performance where everyone pretends to be a "citizen of the world"; now, it’s time to crawl back into our own trenches. The only money left will probably go toward measuring the diameter of cucumbers, because apparently, without that, the European Union can't function 🙂. Measuring cucumbers—that’s basically the heart of Europe right there: figuring out how to look busy doing absolutely nothing, while the taxpayers pick up the tab.

Once the Americans take down the German auto industry with their electric vehicles, this whole thing is going to collapse like a house of cards.

First of all, the oil giants are far too powerful to allow a serious entry into the electric vehicle market. This isn't just about the USA... Electric car technology has existed for, what, twenty years? And you can see for yourself how popular they actually are.

Secondly, even if there were a sudden flood of electric vehicles, did it never occur to you that those same Germans would just pivot to producing them? Someone still has to manufacture cars for Europe.

Thirdly, it’s hard to say how much oil is left, but until recently, the forecasts suggested we'd hit a shortage within twenty years—and now, suddenly, there’s so much that the cartels had to artificially hike up the prices. It is realistic to expect that such a scenario won't be happening for a very, very long time... I'd say at least for the rest of our lives.

The European Union will likely face the collapse of the auto industry long before it ever triggers a global war.

And regarding the idea that the European Union is sinking... after Brexit and the fact that the Englishmen became roughly 20% to 30% poorer overnight just due to the depreciation of the pound, I find it hard to believe any sensible entity would fall for such a mistake.
Perhaps the inclusion of Mexico or other similarly impoverished nations might seriously shake things up in the European Union.

You guys are getting way off track here.