Modern students have to work as much as 6x longer to pay for college than 30 years ago
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 ...
Heh... Lomas = loans
I think you just agreed with me. Four year universities are not available to those without loans, family money, etc. They *used* to be available.
My DIL took the courses she could afford and sat out asemester when things were tight. She was going to sit out another semester but I found out and I gave her the downpayment on her tuition and she was able to pay it off through the semester.
The trouble is that in a college town there are 20000 kids competing for the same few score jobs, so employers don’t have to pay much. Add in the fact that most of the students have classes during the day and are looking for jobs that operate on weekends and evenings, and the competition gets even stiffer.
My extremely hard-working, focused daughter tried to work her way through school. Despite extensive and excellent experience in a very difficult work area, plus glowing recommendations from everyone she had ever worked for, she couldn’t find a job in her college town. She ended up taking care of horses for $6 an hour. It was physically exhausting work in all weather with occasional injuries thrown in for good measure. She is very tough, resolute, and brave and she knew quite well what she was doing, but it still beat her to death. It wasn’t until her senior year that she finally got a retail job. Even then, she was dead on her feet. My hat’s off to that tough cookie for working and studying as hard as she did.
The problem is that if you are working full time, you may not be able to get the required courses in at the right time to graduate in four years. Graduating in five years is becoming more and more the norm. But in the fifth year the usual grants and scholarships go away. A student may find herself forced to face a choice between quitting without a degree or taking on (more) debt in order to finish.
My first year at the Univ of Ark in 1977-78 cost $470 in tuition. That covered all hours you could take. I took 16 my first semester and 18 hours the next.
Room and board in the dorm wasn’t bad. All you could eat cafeteria that was the best on campus. It was really good.
That must be lovely. Of course, you got a job in the first place. That's an accomplishment in itself for a young person today.
How about go to community college and live at home, and then transfer to a 4 year college near your home.
In San Jose, that would be under $25k total. I’m assuming 3 years at San Jose State.
I sold women's shoes in a local mall shoestore on weekends; I worked for Sears running a call center in Melrose Park Monday - Friday from 3pm - 9pm, I installed TV and communications antenna's and pre-wired new homes as they were being built for phone, cable, satellite, alarm and central vacuum systems with a friend as our own business.
I graduated in three years and had $7,500 in debt which I paid off my first year out of college. In addition to the full-time job I found upon graduation, I continued with the tv, communications, satellite, pre-wiring homes and installing alarms and central vacuum' systems business with my friend for several more years to keep making extra money. I'm very proud of the fact that I made my own way and did it on my own. That's something no one can ever take away from me.
I bought my first home at 23 years of age as a "fixer upper" and moved into it with my bride the same year. By the time we sold it 5 years later, it was the nicest house on the block, rehabbed from the inside out using our own labor and our own money. We made a very nice profit on the home when we sold it and moved into our current home with the profits.
The desire to succeed combined with hard work is a powerful motivator. Something which today's "millenials" lack. They want everything handed to them, and that's not the way the world works.
Excellent! Good for you. That's a benefit that's becoming more and more rare, fantastic that you're takng advantage of it. Best of luck to you!
My company paid for my 2nd degree.
A decent course is thought generally to require at least two hours of study time for each credit hour, so a three-hour course will take up nine to twelve hours of time each week--three hours in the classroom and another six to nine hours outside of it, not including research or exam time. A full-time course load sufficient to qualify for any student aid (grants, scholarships, work-study programs, or loans) is five courses, so you're looking at 45-60 hours per week devoted to classwork and studying. The load is going to be heavier if you're taking science courses and have to put in time in the lab, write papers, etc. Much depends on the intellectual standard of the institution.
Anyway, a full-time student is doing a full-time job of studying if he is in a serious degree area like science or engineering. He'll spend time working and time commuting to classes and job, and devote a certain amount of time to the necessities of life--shopping, cooking, laundry, whatever. But it doesn't leave a huge amount of time for lying around playing games.
My coworkers went to Harvard for free.
One of my Sunday School kids joined ROTC and they paid for almost all of his degree
It's inexorable.
The fewer kids that are willing to pay off those loans, often upwards of $100k, the more expensive the education for the remaining suckers.
Soon NOBODY will pay $200k or more for a 4year degree in stupid from the average State University. Well, except for the genuinely stupid.
I wish I had the option of pursuing my Masters in the 1980's. I graduated college (first time) in 1985, and had to find work in a hurry due to parents divorcing and my needing a place to live as a result. Ended up buying a house and putting off pursuing my Masters in Computer Science.
Finally went back in .... 2004 (19 years later) to complete my masters degree. By then I was on my second house and had two grade-school aged kids and a wife.
Oh and the cost: $36,000 out of pocket to complete my Masters Degree. My "first choice" of programs to go through was $72,000 which was well out of my price range... that would've been the Notre Dame Mendoza School of Business.
I have 2 dozen people working for me now in the tech business, maybe more, who are well over $100k/yr.
None with a college degree. Some did not graduate High School but picked up their GED later.
More than 10 are over $200k.
wgu.edu
Wrong. When I went to Tulane in the late 70s it was 5K a year and the job market was wide open. I earned 700 a week painting houses. Now Tulane is 40k a year and with illegals painting houses is now minimum wage job. Blaming the younger generation has been a weak argument since Socrates.
No, I did the math based on the BS spewed in the article as in the quote I copied. I didn’t bother with the variables.
I had a full time job, was in university band and held down 16-18 hours a semester for my first two years. And did some partying! lol
But as you pointed out there are so many variables this idiot author can’t even fathom them enough before just whining.
Well, you don't live where I do, and you don't see what I see. I've been a hiring manager the last 18+ years of my career and I can tell you factually that the "kids" coming out of college want the world with little work. They expect to get the high paying gig with zero experience (they think they learned it all in College ya know) and whine when they don't get it.
I'm in the Shitcago area --- that's my experience.
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