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I do not finds it hard to believe, much less common or more harder to do now days of course. What I do find hard to believe, modern context, are those saying they worked and paid for college along with their housing, car, etc, then to top it off, exclaim surprise and accusations of laziness onto others when they did not do the same.
Average tuition is $9500 or so, I find it hard to believe someone straight out of high school found a job that paid enough to pay for tuition and housing, yet is flexible enough to take college full time (traditional, not online). And that they think all 20 thousand or so students should do the same because we all know there are thousands of full time, well paying jobs requiring low skills of a high school graduate available.
Edit: I worked 32 hours a week while in the first two years of college, my wife worked 32 hours a week during her 2nd and 3rd year of college. The jobs were very flexible and they allowed us to schedule around our classes, which were all over the place schedule wise.
I do not finds it hard to believe, much less common or more harder to do now days of course. What I do find hard to believe, modern context, are those saying they worked and paid for college along with their housing, car, etc, then to top it off, exclaim surprise and accusations of laziness onto others when they did not do the same.
Average tuition is $9500 or so, I find it hard to believe someone straight out of high school found a job that paid enough to pay for tuition and housing, yet is flexible enough to take college full time (traditional, not online). And that they think all 20 thousand or so students should do the same because we all know there are thousands of full time, well paying jobs requiring low skills of a high school graduate available.
Edit: I worked 32 hours a week while in the first two years of college, my wife worked 32 hours a week during her 2nd and 3rd year of college. The jobs were very flexible and they allowed us to schedule around our classes, which were all over the place schedule wise.
Literally two weeks before I was starting my freshman year, my parents sat me down and told me that they couldn't afford to send me. My father was an architect, my mother was a real estate, and it was 1980 when interest rates hit 18.5%.
So I went out and got a full-time job at the local newspaper. It was the morning paper, so I worked 3 pm to midnight, five days a week. I started out as a copyboy and wound up writing features.
On M-W-F, I literally went to class from 8 am to 2 pm, ate lunch, then worked from three to midnight. On T-Th, I typically had two classes that allowed me to study before going to work at three. For extra fun, I lived at home during my college career.
Then Saturday? Up and at it. Study, read, paper writing, you name it. A good portion of Sunday, too. During summers, I worked a second job to give me some cushion.
The economy improved before my junior year, so my parents could help out some. So I cut back to 24 hours a week. Good thing, too, because I was in the heart of my major by that point.
I graduated on time, made Dean's list four of my eight semesters, and walked off the stage without a dime of student loans to my name.
But it was a miserable, grueling four years. I was constantly sick, constantly tired, and had almost no social life. I can count the number of dates I had in college on two hands. I don't recommend the experience to anyone.
I think the OP asks a fair question. I've often wondered the same thing. And your narrative here doesn't explain it. Because if you were taking a full load of classes, there's no way you could cover all the homework and reading by squeezing it in on your light-course-load days, and on weekends. You even say that you didn't study all day Sundays, only "a good portion of Sundays".
Congratulations on putting up with a horrific schedule for those years, but I don't see how you could have done it, unless maybe you had an easy major, but even then, lots of reading is required, as well as research and writing assignments, going to the library, which takes time in itself, just getting to and from, etc.
I also wonder how you got a full-time job as a copy boy at the newspaper, with only a HS degree.
In 1985, tuition for 15 credit hours at UT Austin cost $364.
In 2017, tuition for 12+ hours costs $5143.
It is vastly harder to do now.
ETA: DH's parents did pay for his undergraduate degree (only, he was on the hook for grad and law school tuition) and, being owners of a small business, they paid his tuition from the business as if he were an employee. (Despite that fact that he was "employed" on the other side of the state.) Both DH and I want to pull our hair out when his parents to this day moan about the crazy high tuition burden they endured, in the early 90s mind you at a state university. Meanwhile DH and I have paid half a million dollars in private school tuition before our kids ever entered high school.
There is simply no comparison between tuition costs then v. now, across the board. It was no terrific achievement to have put oneself through college a couple decades ago. Now, it truly is a feat.
I think the OP asks a fair question. I've often wondered the same thing. And your narrative here doesn't explain it. Because if you were taking a full load of classes, there's no way you could cover all the homework and reading by squeezing it in on your light-course-load days, and on weekends. You even say that you didn't study all day Sundays, only "a good portion of Sundays".
Congratulations on putting up with a horrific schedule for those years, but I don't see how you could have done it, unless maybe you had an easy major, but even then, lots of reading is required, as well as research and writing assignments, going to the library, which takes time in itself, just getting to and from, etc.
I also wonder how you got a full-time job as a copy boy at the newspaper, with only a HS degree.
Copy boy was basically an errand boy for a newspaper, a Jimmy Olsen type. It was not a degreed position. I would do things such as take copy to the composing room, go pick up photos, input football scores, take dictation from correspondents over the phone, etc. etc. It became more challenging when they discovered I could write and sent me out to cover things. So I was the wide-eyed eighteen-year-old covering murders, wrecks, fires, and what have you. It was always interesting when the professor came to class the next day and commented on the story I wrote. In truth, newspapers at the time were still very much a blue-collar kind of place. Yeah, you needed a degree most of the time, but I also knew reporters who started out as copy boys and worked their way up. Had I decided to do so, I'm pretty sure I would have done the same.
And, yes, I managed the homework load. If I had a class on Monday, I did the work or reading on Monday night after getting home or Tuesday. If I had a class on Thursday or Friday, that was what the weekend was for. I didn't say that I got a lot of sleep, which explains why I was so run down all the time.
I'll fully admit that I didn't do it perfectly. Spring semester of my freshman year was a near-run thing when I ran smack into a ballbuster biology class. But I made up for that near-disaster in my sophomore, junior, and senior years. At the same time, I got my core curriculum out of the way Freshman year and I gamed the system a bit by taking German 101 and 102 to meet my language requirement, even though I took two years of it in high school. Even so, making Bs and the occasional C when I was a freshman or sophomore was far better than not going at all or amassing debt. Those were my two other alternatives.
My major was English, which was a demanding curriculum that involved plenty of reading and writing. That being said, a lot of it was a matter of time management. Even today, I think people don't realize how much free time they have. I literally did my work and reading at lunch, at dinner, between classes, when I got home, you name it. Every nook and cranny of my schedule was crammed with something. Plus I read and write rapidly. Learning to type 100 wpm when I was at the newspaper performed wonders for my ability to crank out papers.
But, once again, I paid a price for it. Whenever people reminisce about TV shows, music, or movies from the early 80s, I almost always give them a blank stare, because I have zero ideas what they're talking about. I literally had no time for any of that in my life.
I'll fully admit that I didn't do it perfectly. Spring semester of my freshman year was a near-run thing when I ran smack into a ballbuster biology class.
My major was English, which was a demanding curriculum that involved plenty of reading and writing. That being said, a lot of it was a matter of time management. Even today, I think people don't realize how much free time they have. I literally did my work and reading at lunch, at dinner, between classes, when I got home, you name it. Every nook and cranny of my schedule was crammed with something. Plus I read and write rapidly. Learning to type 100 wpm when I was at the newspaper performed wonders for my ability to crank out papers.
But, once again, I paid a price for it. Whenever people reminisce about TV shows, music, or movies from the early 80s, I almost always give them a blank stare, because I have zero ideas what they're talking about. I literally had no time for any of that in my life.
Congratulations! And == you didn't miss much, pop-culture-wise. Not being able to talk about those things is no big deal. I'm sure you have more interesting things to talk about, anyway.
As to the ballbuster bio class: I remember that class!! I had to drop back to 12 credits, because of it! The thing about those biology classes is that in addition to the full schedule of class hours, you had an extra several hours of lab per week, that didn't accrue additional credits, so it was like taking twice the class time for just a normal credit load.
OK, so it sounds like you developed super-concentration skills, to get things done, and stole time at lunch, break time at work, etc., to get everything done. Very intense! The newspaper job sounds like fun, too. People can't get into journalism that way, anymore--starting out as copy boy, and working up to do fluff articles, then serious reporting. It's degrees all the way, now. Well, for those newspapers that have survived so far...
This may have been a miserable life while you were living it, but look at the great job experience you got, and probably--fabulous references, for your post-BA career! People who had school paid for them back then didn't have that advantage.
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I agree with Minivan, that it can be done with an easy major. Although English requires reading, it's not a killer major at all. I took many more English courses than I needed as electives, and enjoyed them. My major was sociology, which was also an easy major.
I don't think this can be done if you major in something that's difficult like Engineering, and if you don't live at home free and eat free like Minivan.
And I also took a beginning biology class, and it was more difficult than my other courses. What if your major was biology, and you had several of those every semester?
The people I happen to know (not me) who worked full-time and went to school full-time were nursing students with in-home caretaker jobs for the elderly or children. This gave them some down time to study while their patients slept, read, watched TV, had therapy etc.
I remember meeting my friend at the home of her elderly patient and the elderly woman (a retired nurse) was helping my friend study for a nursing exam. I thought that was a great arrangement - both the patient and student/employee loved the interaction.
Does anyone else want to call bull when someone says that? I hear this comment so much and never buy it. Simple mathematics shows that it would be virtually impossible not only to get 40 hours a week in while taking a minimum of 12 credits, but also when would you study? For those of you who say you did it, how did you your schedule look?
I don't believe some people did it. My issue is what was possible 20 or 30 years ago is much less likely to be possible with today's much higher tuition.
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