“Hookers” will tell you otherwise.
College should only be considered as an opportunity to gain skills for future employment. Nothing more.
Well, back in the day all you needed at a university was a room, a book, and a professor. Now you gotta have a TA who barely speaks engrish actually teach the class so its way more expensive.
More like greedy school (liberal) officials.
Wow this story is about 20 years late.
Colleges as they currently exist are nearing extinction. It may not seem so now, but the current paradigm can’t continue. The cost/benefit analysis is upside down. The replacement for colleges is already at hand, it is the professional certification. If you want to work in Quality you have to join a professional society which will provide all the education you need, and a certificate. (Of course, you have to perform some QA course work every year and pay to keep up your citification. But that certification is what employers are looking for, not a college degree, which is largely useless now for employment purposes.) The same is true for other employment specialties like being a program manager. Again, a private organization provides the courses and the certification.
We found something that works for our son. He pays upfront at a community college with the money he earned by working in a restaurant. Any grade B and above we reimburse. We made him take responsible for his future. He is graduating soon with zero college debt and a very high GPA.
He came here 9 years ago and spoke no English. Now he is nearly graduated with his first degree and had been on the dean’s list every semester. He also is a member of the National Honor Society. All it takes is hard work and parents that care enough to be parents and not friends to their children.
“In 1956, as a freshman at Yale, I waited tables in a student dorm for about $1 an hour, 10 hours a week, over the 30-week academic year. I received a full scholarship, but even if it had ended, I recall that Yale’s “all in” price—including tuition, room and board—was $1,800 a year. My work during the term could have covered one-sixth of that.”
I’d like to point out, not that -I- am saying this or anything but the left would read this paragraph and think only “This is DRIPPING with white privilege” and they would immediately dismiss it as racist garbage.
If someone else doesn’t voluntarily pay for your college education — whether through scholarship or writing checks for the tuition — you can always go two years to a community college while working full-time and then transfer to your four-year public university to finish up.
At two classes a semester, three semesters a year, you are done in six years top. You don’t have student loans and you have six years of work experience to boot!
College loans and scholarships are just one more area that the federal government should exit pronto.
Horsecrap.
Funny, throughout life I've come to rely on the skills I learned at Sears more than the ones I learned in college! I built up a pretty nice collection of hand tools as well.
To work your way through college you have to pull down about 20 hours a week at $25. For that you need skills. Welders, plumbers, electricians,and other trades can do that. A skilled carpenter can do that.
Of course, if you have those skills, who needs college?
What people need to understand is that, for the vast majority of Americans, college is priced based on one’s income. It’s that simple.
The “sticker price” for colleges is such that a family not in the 0.1% income bracket cannot afford it, for private colleges (and roughly the top 1% for public colleges). The rest of the country doesn’t pay ‘sticker price’.
So what do families do? They are forced to disclose their income and their assets to get ‘financial aid’, which is another way of saying that if they have low income, tuition will be priced low, if they have higher income they will pay more. The college will decide based on one’s ability to pay, and often the college will require slave labor as part of the deal.
It makes me wonder whether this is even legal. If the price of a car, or the price of groceries were dependent on my income, that would suck, and the idea of Walmart DEMANDING to see my income/assets before giving me a realistic price for an item is just plan weird and it’s very hard to see how people would tolerate that.
But since no one thinks that way regarding college costs, we all just accept the status quo.
When I was growing up, my family lived very cheap and saved as much money as they could for us to go to college. Our next door neighbor, spent madly, with exotic vacations, boats, etc. And guess which family got the near-free ride for their kids in college (hint, it wasn’t us). My mom is still really angry about that.
Go to a Community College for the first 2 years, making sure credits are transferable to your intended 4 yr. college.
Don’t worry about impressing your friends.
You’ll never see 90% of them again anyway.
The academic bureaucracy trained them to want cushy dorms.
Schools that couldn't compete academically offered the "comfortable social experience" instead to fill classroom seats.
Calling BS. If you are good student with poor parents, your college will be paid by the state. It won’t be enough to cover tuition plus all living expenses but it will be close. If you live with friends or family, and driver Uber or work at a restaurant, you can do it.
No, you can’t do the Ivy League Indoctrination Centers. But they are an utter waste of money. There is no reason at all other than snobism to pay for an Ivy League school if you are poor. (Poor, good students who make a partial sport or academic scholarship at an Ivy League might benefit from student loans to get to play and study there, only exception I know of.)
During my Freshman year, my College decided to start a Computer Science course. The local IBM salesman gave a Fortran Programming course in the Fall, and he brought an IBM 1620 Computer for us to use. All of us geeks were pleased to see that they did’t take the computer away after Winter break, although they did take the card punch machine.
When the College bought their real IBM 1620 in the Spring, I was one of the few programmers available, so I was able to negotiate a $3/hr rate when the normal student rate was $1.25. When I graduated, the Business Manager said I was the only one to graduate showing a profit. I guess one can’t do that any more.
Let me fix his headline... You can’t work your way through PRIVATE college anymore, because the government made student loans so easy to acquire, the schools jacked up their tuition rates.
I used to work with high schoolers as a private admissions advisor, helping them to figure out which school and what they could afford.
If you’re smart, but not smart enough to get a scholarship... Go to community college for two years, and then transfer to an in-state four year institution. Living at home,working part time, and full time over the summer will absolutely allow you to pay for school. If you live too far to commute to any school in your state, begin the search for private scholarships and you can certainly come close to the price tag for room and board.