Posted on 04/01/2014 7:22:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A lot of Internet ink has been spilled over how lazy and entitled Millennials are, but when it comes to paying for a college education, work ethic isn't the limiting factor. The economic cards are stacked such that today’s average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his courses—a feat that would require superhuman endurance, or maybe a time machine.
To take a close look at the tuition history of almost any institution of higher education in America is to confront an unfair reality: Each year’s crop of college seniors paid a little bit more than the class that graduated before. The tuition crunch never fails to provide new fodder for ongoing analysis of the myths and realities of The American Dream. Last week, a graduate student named Randy Olson listened to his grandfather extol the virtues of putting oneself through college without family support. But paying for college without family support is a totally different proposition these days, Olson thought. It may have been feasible 30 years ago, or even 15 years ago, but it's much harder now.
He later found some validation for these sentiments on Reddit, where one user had started a thread about the increasing cost per course at Michigan State University.
MSU calculates tuition by the "credit hour," the term for the number of hours spent in a classroom per week. By this metric, which is used at many U.S. colleges and universities, a course that's worth three credit hours is a course that meets for three hours each week during the semester. If the semester is 15 weeks long, that adds up to 45 total hours of a student's time.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Soon NOBODY will pay $200k or more for a 4year degree in stupid from the average State University.
<><><><
Most of these discussions about the utility of a college degree and passing these 200K numbers seem to be missing something.
That assumes the cost of a private college.
State school tuition for an in state public university in Maryland is under 10K. Throw in books and fees for another 2K. And that is the main campus of the Univ of Maryland in College Park.
I looked up California, also under 10K.
Oklahoma - under 8K
As this seems to be a favored topic (handful of threads over the last week or so it seems), we ought to at least be discussing facts.
I also worked my way through college at a local state university, from 85-90. Tuition was $1800 per year for me, and minimum wage was approx $3.50. I worked 15hrs/week min wage during school, and worked construction for $10/hr every summer, 40hrs per week.
My son is now going to the same university. Tuition is $14,000 per year, and minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Like I did, he lives at home and commutes to save money.
So it took me approx 514 hours of work at minimum wage to pay my yearly tuition. It would take my son approx 1931 hours to pay his. 3.75X more. He’s young, energetic and ambitious, but he can’t work 56 hours a week during school and 150 during the summer and still do well in school.
Millenials are deserving of their fair share of criticism, but we can’t ignore the math. The federal government has greatly distorted the market by pumping money into education. And don’t even get me started on the price of textbooks these days...
For those without the academic bona fides to earn a merit scholarship, two years at a community college, followed by a transfer to a state school should work just fine. A 40-hour-a-week worker taking two courses per semester, three times a year should take 2 1/3 years for the first half of a degree (and an associates) and 2 1/3 years for the second half of a degree (and a bachelor’s).
That’s actually quicker than the now common five-year plan through a supposedly four-year institution. It should also leave the student debt-free and readily employable with a substantial work history in 4 2/3 years time.
Yep.
But even with the system we have now, if we simply stopped with the government subsidies of various types, community colleges would immediately have a higher caliber of student—just like the state colleges had in the old days before everyone went to a four-year school.
Excellent post. That explains clearly the problem. Costs are 3.75 times more, and much more in many places, and the costs are clearly out of reach of minimum wage with the problem being taxpayer monies pumped into the system.
The costs go higher, the loans get bigger, and the money is funneled back into the dem coffers by lib institutions of higher learning.
I worked my way through college. I got a job as a night shift janitor, and was a full time engineering student by day.
4 years and DONE!
Thankfully, I got laid off after about 2 years and got to keep my “scholarship”.
My brother has 3 sons. One is a Sophomore at Georgetown. He’s on a 50% academic scholarship but my bro still has to come up with $27k a year. His middle son is a senior in HS and just got his acceptance letters. He got in to Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, and Middlebury. His youngest son starts HS next year. He told me yesterday that he’s running out of kidneys to sell to afford this...
People tend to also like to eat. And have a roof over their heads. And shower. So you have to add living expenses to the tuition and books.
I agree that the $200,000 mark isn’t realistic, But $25,000 a year at a state school is the standard when you add it all up. (Tuition, books, room, board) And that’s actually for a 9 month school ‘year’. They kick you out of your dorm during holidays and summers. So now you’ve got to compete with other broke college kids for summer jobs and the jobs aren’t there.
Ditto.
That’s another ‘trap’ that I’ve seen many of the best and brightest of my children’s generation fall into.
Here’s the math:
You’re offered a $10,000 scholarship to a state school, leaving you with a $15,000 student loan at the end of the first year. You keep your grades up and have the same thing at the end of the second year. You’ve got $30,000 in loans for your Associates.
The community college is $4,500 for tuition and books. And about $5000 for room and board. At the end of two years, you’ve got a student loan (providing that was your only method of funding) of $19,000 for an Associates.
But these kids are convinced that it’s better to have that extra $11,000 in debt for the same education because they got a scholarship and somehow it would be wrong to ‘waste’ it.
And nobody’s even brought up the fact that college isn’t for everybody and most of these kids washout and never finish anyway. (That’s why the actual average for student loans is $29,000 per student. More than half drop out and never even get the degree. All they get is debt.)
Thanks to my ROTC scholarship and summer jobs, my parents didn't have to pay one thin dime for my college education.
It wasn't a "free ride": at my school, ROTC commitments averaged 15 hours a week, including a weekend training exercise every month. My spring breaks were spent trudging through the forests of Fort Lewis for four days.
I'm not complaining, it's one of the best breaks I ever got.
I worked my way through college by working summers and weekends at a local factory making $2.75 per hour.
Of course, full-time tuition at the time was $450.00 per semester.
I’d argue that for academically strong students, a case can be made for a marginally more expensive education—even if it means living at home, rather than on campus. And, I’ll admit, room and board for a community college seems oxymoronic to me.
I think there are advantages to having smarter classmates, as one may have in rigorous classes at at least a state school, and more academically prominent professors.
Really, online ed ought to be competitive with community college solutions in pretty short order.
Yup. And I’m willing to bed that milk, bread, gas, and rent was a little less back then, too.
Know what else would help? Only letting the book-smart kids into college. Stop letting in kids who can’t even do remedial reading and math. No more ‘catch up’ courses. If you don’t have the skills to actually succeed in college, why are we letting these kids take out loans when failure is almost certain?
“Everyone should have the opportunity to go to college,” is the mantra. You just have to barely pass your high school classes and be willing to put your neck on the debt chopping block to get in somewhere. High school grades don’t even matter anymore. I know that grades don’t always show talent, but they do show the basic discipline to do well in school. Too many kids have the brains, but they’re scattered.
So yes, everyone should have the opportunity; but if you fritter away that opportunity, you should lose it. For your own good. We’re setting kids up for failure and they’re paying a heavy price for an unrealistic ideal.
A job with the flexibility to be a full time student, you aren’t going to get much over minimum age, I made about $10 an hour and worked my way through college, at that time that was more than double minimum wage, of course today that same job still pays about $10 an hour and is about 30% of over minimum wage.
Meanwhile College costs, for my entire 4 years was about 20k same school, same degree today cost is 20k a YEAR.
It is not impossible to work your way through school, but to make the 20k a year NET (not gross, got to pay your taxes) to cover your tuition means basically working a full time job at about 13 an hour just to pay your tuition, not your living expenses and other things....
Reality is school costs have risen annually and immoral rates, while wages have been completely depressed.
I graduated in 1994, I spent about 20k for my degree, and walked into a job making just shy of double that a year... today the same degree, same college will cost you 80k and the job will make you about 50k to start. So, in 20 years, College cost went up 300%, while wages for the degree went up 25%.
For me to do the same thing I did, which was work through college, I’d have to be earning $40 an hour, not $10 to just be equal... and very few college age folks are going to have the skills, let alone find a job with the flexibility needed to do full time work and be paid the equivalent of 80k a year.
Exactly, see post 77.
Anyone saying they can do it just like always is BLISSFULLY unaware of the fiscal realities of is very very bad at math.
Absolutely! We waste years of their lives and taxpayer dollars because there are no consequences for paltry academic achievement through high school.
I wouldn’t give them free extra years for a high school diploma, either. It’s their job to learn while the learning is good.
Six hours a day? Wow. I might have spent six hours a week. But I was in business school and accounting came easy to me. So did economics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.