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I think students have legitimate grievances. It varies widely by state, however. I am from Florida where college is very accessible through the Bright Futures scholarships and low tuition.
I now live in Illinois and tuition+fees in state is about $15-20K without including stuff like books, transportation, etc. Even working part-time, it is not going to be reasonable for a person to be able to work through school and pay that off on the typical jobs you get as a college student paying $15-20 an hour.
I have a niece who is currently working as a barista at the Starbucks on the campus at Illinois State University. Technically, she's actually an ISU employee (gets ISU employee benefits)...but she doesn't make as much as $15 an hour. And she's also subject to seasonable layoffs.
Can you provide sources? I did a Google search for both of those and didn't find anything like what you're saying.
Looking again, I'll amend my statement: Louisiana requires students to apply for student loans as a high school graduation prerequisite. They aren't required to accept it, and of course, most high school graduates don't go on to attend college anyway.
But once it's explicitly offered to a kid...that's certainly a powerful enticement to accept it. That's pretty much like the government requiring a kid to apply for a credit card that the government knows will be approved (because the government has, on the back side, guaranteed payback to the bank).
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In 2018, Louisiana became the first state to pass a law requiring students to complete the FAFSA as a prerequisite for graduating from high school. ... This is the first year that students from those states will be required to complete the form, which becomes available on October 1.
Not sure if they still do this, but the community colleges in San Antonio would post what credits would transfer to a state university. They have branches of University of Texas and Texas A&M in the city. Also several private universities.
Every university that I’ve been associated with does this.
While taking inexpensive community college classes to fulfill general education requirements can be a very cost effective alternative, many students make the mistake of believing that community college courses in specialty areas (accounting, management, etc.) will necessarily transfer to that major in a university. They almost never do. For example, most community college AS accounting programs include a course on payroll accounting. The vast majority of University accounting programs don’t include that at all, and there is therefore no way to transfer it in to meet a university requirement. In other cases, courses may share the same or similar name, but often the content in the CC course is very watered down.
The community college specialty majors, like accounting, are generally not designed as a bridge into a university accounting program, but rather as a stand-alone education to enable one to work in a clerk level role in accounting. This information is generally not hidden, but one does need to ask the right questions, if advising fails to address the issue.
Every university that I’ve been associated with does this.
While taking inexpensive community college classes to fulfill general education requirements can be a very cost effective alternative, many students make the mistake of believing that community college courses in specialty areas (accounting, management, etc.) will necessarily transfer to that major in a university. They almost never do. For example, most community college AS accounting programs include a course on payroll accounting. The vast majority of University accounting programs don’t include that at all, and there is therefore no way to transfer it in to meet a university requirement. In other cases, courses may share the same or similar name, but often the content in the CC course is very watered down.
The community college specialty majors, like accounting, are generally not designed as a bridge into a university accounting program, but rather as a stand-alone education to enable one to work in a clerk level role in accounting. This information is generally not hidden, but one does need to ask the right questions, if advising fails to address the issue.
They call it articulation, and any student attending a community college with the intent to transfer to a 4-year university should work with their campus counselors to ensure they are taking appropriate classes for their major and that the credits will in fact transfer to their university of choice.
And to answer the question of this thread - I do not think "kids" are whining when they complain of college expenses, or any of the other bags of dooky the boomers handed to them.
The younger generations work far more efficiently and productively than generations before, and they are doing it for far less (adjusting for inflation and the buying power of the dollar). At the same time, the cost of living has gone up, and in my neighborhood, the cost of a home has increased by sevenfold in the last 20 years. So someone graduating from HS today, even if they go the community college route, will potentially earn a BS or BA degree with about $25-50,000 student loan debt, and depending on their career path, can expect to start earning $40-60,000 a year (if they are lucky enough to land a position within the 6 month grace period before having to repay their loan). Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment around here is about $2,000/month. A modest 2-3 bedroom bungalow costs around $850,000-1,000,000+.
Yeah, I get that college is more expensive today, and granted I went back before this in the mid 2000s, but when I was in college I worked 2 jobs and even did odd jobs to get by.
Where do you live?
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Originally Posted by ukiyo-e
I graduated in 1975 and my tuition was so low (state university) I could pay for both semesters with a summer job paying near minimum wage. .
And where do you live?
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Originally Posted by unit731
In my state.
As a US miltary veteran. Tuition at any state college or state university is no charge.
Where do you live?
If only there was a way to somehow mark down where people live on the CITY DATA forum...
If only there was a way to somehow mark down where people live on the CITY DATA forum...
While I understand that your questions may be intended to underscore the fact that opportunities and economics are not exactly the same everywhere, please realize that forum participants may feel hesitant to reveal too much personal information in their posts.
And then, some of us boldly place our location right within our user names...
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 03-04-2022 at 08:39 AM..
Reason: Spelling correction.
The point you are missing is that yes everything is more expensive today, but the cost of college has gone up literally about 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation. So, while everything is more expensive, the cost of a college education has literally skyrocketed. The link I am enclosing shows that college tuition has increased about 1300% since 1979. On the other hand, inflation has increased by about 300% during the same period.
I paid for my undergraduate college education because it was relatively easy to do so. There maybe a handful of young people who can somehow find a way to do that today in 2022, but the point is that they are the exceptions. Most young people will not be able to find a way to do it and will not end up going to college. Yet, many seniors want to give great lectures to young people about "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" or about how when they went to school forty years ago "they walked uphill to school both ways".
State colleges and universities frankly should face more scrutiny when they raise tuition. Increases should have to be justified the same way that public utilities have to justify rate increases or state government agencies justify property tax increases. We tend to let the Board of Regents skate when it comes to this process and turn a blind eye to huge increases.
In the late 70s/early 80s my friends making minimum wage (or slightly more) could share an apartment, get a nice used car, go out on a Saturday night, and take a week long vacation staying at a motel or campground near a beach or lake. Minimum wage was just under $3 an hour and those who worked their way up to a $10 salary were buying their own starter homes.
The economics of today do not equate to that type of opportunity for most people working at minimum wage due to much higher inflation-adjusted housing, transportation, healthcare, and other living expenses.
That being said, there are options for obtaining a college degree at a more affordable cost. It is also true that too many people are pursuing 4-year degrees who would be better served by pursuing training through local community colleges for a job in a trade, manufacturing, or another field requiring specialized skills.
If you adjust for inflation, college profs make the same money now as they did 50 years ago. 50 years ago, there wasn’t an assistant Vice President of student affairs making $200k. The administrative bloat and frills that didn’t exist 50 years ago have driven the cost up.
How European universities control their costs -
No athletic programs, (U.S. is, I think, the only country in the world to have university sports teams), No costly parking garages, No costly air-conditioning, No celebrity guest speaker fees, No "enrollment diversity monitoring" specialists, No "rape prevention programs", No paying of professors to "publish", No fraternities/ sororities, No unique architecturally designed buildings. Read the articles below.
The cost of a university education rose along with an inflated demand for college education in the workplace. Too many people chasing too few openings makes for some mighty tough job hunting days, and, if one is hired, then he/she must live on what they can muster after paying down their education loans. As for the "other" kinds of jobs, those that don't require a degree, well, they don't pay enough to have the kind of lifestyle that Mom and Dad had, living with roommates for ever, driving clunkers for ever, and that will only be doable IF, one were to have constant forty hour weeks of employment.
So Yes, the youth of today have a much larger problem when trying to make good choices about education, employment, housing, marriage, having children, etc. The biggest restraint is the student loan, which ties them to an impossible debt that was supposed to buy their way out of financial worries, instead, it only adds to that worry. We haven't had much luck trying to pare down the unnecessary portions of a university course, and that would be a logical place to begin the process of restructuring the entirety of our overpriced higher education system.
As a side note:
Union jobs in the trades are very difficult to find and even more difficult to obtain, the rest of the blue collar jobs are being offered at low wages coupled with hard work. Or one can get the jobs which can't take them through their long working lives, instead breaking them down in their late forties and early fifties at which time they become a lasting weight on the SSDI rolls. The "I did it and so can they" attitude, with regard to education and work, is simply a denial of the changes that have altered the relationship between education and expectations.
There are ways to get a university education without costing a lot. Too many use student loans to live better than otherwise, forgetting that those costs need to be repaid.
The biggest cost reducer is where and how you live - live at home or with a roommate in a cheap place - not by themselves in a lux apartment. That is a change since when I went, I lived in a cheap apartment with several roommates living on low cost meals like Ramen and Spaghetti. I was on an academic scholarship but it did not cover enough for housing so living cheap meant that never had a loan. My kids lived at home during college.
The next biggest driver is college tuition - instead of the private 4 year college - do basic courses at low cost community college and transfer to more expensive university after 2 years - tuition much less or even free and employeres don't care about the first 2 years. I went to CC during last year of high school to get ahead and my kids went to CC before switch to a local University after 2 years.
My kids never needed loans, not because we covered their costs but because they lived at home and tuition, fees and books came out of 529 savings that were set up for them - actually they both have over $30K left so can use for grad school etc.
Even with my DW and I going to very expensive grad schools at the same time (different schools) we saved before going instead of using loans etc.
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