A Must Read... Yes, summer job paid tuition back in ’81, but then we got cheap

[rsmith6621]

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021250505_westneat23xml.html

People tell me you used to be able to work one job, the entire summer, and cover your entire education. I’m not sure how long ago that was — I have a hard time believing it. — Stephan Yhann, 21, current UW student

Put down your smartphones, kids, and gather around Uncle Danny. I’m here to tell you a little something about these yarns from the days of yore, these tales so tall and preposterous.

What’s most amazing about them is: They’re true! You really could work a summer job and pay for your education.

[Warpy]

1. Guys could often find part time jobs to pay their living expenses.

Women students had to work full time to pay theirs.

This was in the 60s.

[BeyondGeography]

2. We made consumer non-essentials cheaper while life essentials

(housing, health care and education) have gone through the roof. It's a bad deal.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. No argument there. Those three areas put a huge dent in the budget.

In far too many places, a full-time job will barely cover rent (if at all).

[BeyondGeography]

8. Shortly after I graduated in the 80s the house I grew up in cost almost 10x more

than what my father paid for it in the early 60s. All I could do was laugh (and try to find a wife...).

[abelenkpe]

5. Exactly. Nt

[raccoon]

28. And transportation. In most places, you have to have a car to get anywhere. I'm sure

it's a real stretch to maintain a car on low wages.

[MgtPA]

3. It is true. My brother graduated from college in 1981.

He mowed lawns all summer (some residential, some commercial) and paid his whole tuition.

Edited to add:

In the mid-1970's, Temple University's tuition was $40.00 per credit hour...

[Freddie]

26. $600 a semester

I was a music student and if they wanted you in the marching band you got a $500 "band bribe" which paid almost all of your 2nd semester tuition!

[1-Old-Man]

6. When I first went to school tuition ran a max of $100 per semister.

Then when I went back, seven years later, it had crept up to $600 per semister.

[Liberal Veteran]

7. And it ain't just tuition. Books as well.

It seems that higher education has become a giant siphon to get as much money as possible from students.

[tabbycat31]

9. I think everyone over 40 needs to read this

I got into it with my mom a few weeks ago about something similar. She does not get it.

[former9thward]

10. I went to undergrad in late 60s/early 70s.

I lived on my own all through school. I had a part time job which paid my tuition, living expenses and all other bills. And I always had plenty of goof off money.

[The Straight Story]

11. A respost of something I said in another thread on it all:

In Kentucky, where state funds dropped about 1 percent this year after dropping about 9 percent over the past two years, the University of Louisville's Board of Trustees voted to increase Chancellor James Ramsey's $313,818 salary by 5 percent and give him a $114,033 bonus. It also recommended that the university's foundation increase the $142,314 supplement it gives Ramsey annually. Ramsey, like the university's faculty and staff, went without pay increases for the past three years, and said he would turn down a bonus or give it back to the university, a move that several local media outlets featured prominently. Unlike their counterparts at California State, however, faculty and staff at Louisville were eligible for merit raises of up to 5 percent.

...



http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-07-19-college-president-pay-increase_n.htm
...

College Presidents Making a Killing

Want to become a millionaire fast? Become a college president.

The New York Times covers a report from the Chronicle of Higher Education that found that the the median salary for a college president at a large school has risen to $396,588. In 2004, five presidents earned an annual salary over $1 million. By 2010, more than 30 presidents earned an annual salary over the $1 million mark, with the highest-paid presidents earning up to $3 million:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/12/14/college-presidents-making-a-killing/

....

Florida Inspector General Melinda Miguel recommended in a report issued Monday that parameters be established for college presidents’ pay, leave benefits and expectations for performance.

Miguel said in the report — prompted in part by the $1 million exit contract given to former Florida State College at Jacksonville president Steve Wallace — that compensation varied tremendously among the 28 state colleges in the system of state and community colleges. The presidents’ pay ranged from $143,000 to $630,000, Miguel wrote, and she called for college boards to work together to “jointly establish the parameters upon which the presidents’ total compensation is determined, document the factors upon which compensation is based and standardize this methodology across state colleges.”

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-05-13/story/florida-inspector-general-recommends-limits-pay-college-presidents



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And:

Cost of teachers, which generally up instead of down. Property costs (maintenance, utilities), legal costs, and so on.

If each of those items rose at a steady percent it will outpace things are the number of students might not grow.

Ohio State has roughly 50,000 students (56,387). And has for as long as I can remember had roughly that number.

Less people to pay for things but the costs keep increasing across the board ( $5.15 billion in expenditures).

In 2006 51,818 students and $3.72 billion in expenditures.

71k per students in 2006 (assuming no other funding and such)
91k per student in 2012

22k increase in 6 years (again, not all funding comes from students, but you get the idea)

[raccoon]

29. Cost of teachers going up? Colleges are dealing with that by hiring adjuncts instead of full-time

instructors.

Adjuncts have no benes and lousy wages.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. I worked my way through school in the 1990's

Waiting tables during the year, mostly supermarket work during the summer. Graduated with no debt from a state university - and did the dorms and off campus apartment all four years. Got a little help from the folks, but not much. This was possible 20 years ago. You want to stump me, I don't understand how people pay for these smartphone data plans. They seem exorbitantly expensive.

[JDPriestly]

13. The money all goes for surveillance and similar boondoggle projects.

China and India and foreign lands don't just export cheap consumer goods. They export well funded students. So our universities don't need American students. It is really sad.

[geckosfeet]

14. Depends on the school of course. Tuition rates in the State University system of NY

in the 60's and 70's were low enough so that yes - depending on your job you could earn enough for tuition as long as you were living at home with mom and dad. If you had to pay a mortgage or rent and other normal living expenses it really depended on your job and how much money you had coming in.

Ivy league or private colleges - probably not so much.

on edit - I think tuition in general now is ridiculous. Even at state schools.

[raccoon]

30. At state schools, the states have cut WAY back on the money they used to fund the colleges

with.

Colleges have to make up the money somehow.

[geckosfeet]

33. Yes. But the presumption is that you are going heavilly into debt to be competitive

in the job market. Unfortunately a lot of kids graduate with their BA/BS and end up with no job or are woefully under employed.

Aslo, wages for summer jobs (when you can find one) have been far outpaced by increases in tuition and expenses.

[KG]

15. post secondary ed in this country is has become a scam and a shame

[mountain grammy]

16. Yes, a must read. It was completely possible in the sixties.

I know because I did it. The minimum wage is so ridiculously low now and college expenses are unbelievable.

[HiPointDem]

17. it's true stephan. you could at least pay for tuition with a summer job, and sometimes more,

depending on the job and the school.

plus most colleges had internal jobs programs so that you could work your way through. i did a lot of them -- cleaning university apartments, working at the university-run hotel facilities, working in my dorm food service, etc.

[kimbutgar]

18. I went to college in the California State University system from 1974 to 1978

I worked part time jobs and summers. It paid for my tuition and books at the jc and university. My parents helped me out by paying for my dorm. But I could have taken a student to cover it and paid in off in 2 years. Pre prop 13 days. The good old days. Jarvis/ gann grrrr

[hfojvt]

19. yeah, you'd better have a really GOOD summer job

myself, I was never able to find a summer job, other than the City Band and one week for the state fair. For one summer I did a paper route, or maybe two.

My school at the University of Minnesota from 1980-85 cost about $5,000 a year. That's $2.000 for tuition and $3,000 for room and board - approximately. Probably another $200 a year for books.

A summer job for four months, or 16 weeks. If it was full time at the then-current minimum wage of $3.35 an hour (which is, I believe higher in real terms than it is now) (yes, I just checked that was $8.15 in 2011 dollars in 1981 but down to $6.88 by 1985).

So gross wages for the summer would only be $2,144 - covering less than half the cost of a year of school where I went to school, and that's before taxes and other work-related expenses.

So you need either a better job or a cheaper school to pay for it with a summer job in 1981.

And I was not even able to find a minimum wage job in ANY summer when I was going to school, nor in my senior year of high school.

[MissB]

23. The estimate is $24k/year at the state university.

That includes room, board, books, meal plans.

I tell my kids that I will buy them the book "101 ways to cook ramen" (as if such a book exists).

No minimum wage job is going to cover that cost of tuition plus room/board/books. I'm not sure that fishing in Alaska for the summer (a popular choice amongst some of my friends way back when) would cover that.

I picked up a PSAT study guide for the oldest this weekend at the library and handed it to him, telling him all about the National Merit Scholar deal. It may end up only being $2500, but its within his control to obtain.

[hfojvt]

24. that was not in my ability to obtain

I made the top 5%, but didn't even make the cut to try for a Merit Scholarship. Neither did most of my smart friends, although one who later went to Law School did. The verbal part was more important on the PSAT than the math. My friend who later went to medical school did not get a merit scholarship either.

I think where I messed up is that I should have looked for some scholarships after my freshman year when I had a 4.0 a 3.5 and a 4.0 (for the three trimesters).

What I saw recently though showed a fairly big spread between state schools. KU was far more expensive than Fort Hays, and room and board are probably be cheaper in Hays too.

[MissB]

25. Oddly enough the cutoff varies by state.

Last year our state's cutoff score was 213. Some states had 221.

[Alkene]

20. If you are lower middle-class...

...you are no longer welcome in the Seattle area; you simply can't afford to live here. As a University of Washington Research Technologist, someone who actually does the work which drives a highly lucrative grant system, my take home pay is 1.75 x's the minimum wage for Washington State. Clearly it isn't the salaries of the technical workers at the the U.W., the labor foundation of its research community, which is making higher education out of reach for working people.

I have been seriously considering changing careers lately, but having reviewed the cost of a degree program I'm not so sure.
I am literally not paid enough by my own employer to be able to afford its product.

[dsc]

21. I did a thread not to long ago

I can't remember the exact ratios but in terms of median income, college costs have skyrocketed. In the 1970's college was a true middle class product if you went to a state school, but now it is priced out of reach.

[MissB]

22. I just plunked down $679

For one 4 credit class for my kid for the summer at the local state university. Plus another $140 for a USED book.

He wanted to take the class. He's 15 and not working yet.

I went to the same state university, graduating in '96. I paid about $1000/term for full time classes, plus books. Books were cheaper (though not much less). The per credit amount is crazy. I can't wait to pay for my kids' college educations beginning in just a few years.

We won't have to pay loans for our kids. But college shouldn't be just for the upper middle class and wealthy. The gap between what grants/loans/scholarships may cover and what families have to pay is ridiculous. Yes, even after borrowing though the federal loan process, there are gaps. I'm astounded by how pervasive private student loans are nowadays, and I truly feel for folks that have to make tough decisions on how or whether to pay for college.

[hunter]

27. I didn't take out any loans in college.

I had some warehouse and construction skills and I was strong. Finding temp jobs that paid $7-10 an hour wasn't difficult. Many of those jobs occasionally had time-and-a-half overtime too. I remember the first time I made a $100 in a day, moving furniture.

My share of the rent on crappy apartments I shared with other guys was $80 to $120 a month. College was mostly paid for by the state and federal government. I didn't need loans.

One of my kids pays college rent of $700, but makes the same wages I did. Tuition is astronomical. It's not fair.

Working while in college eventually caused trouble. That's how I flunked Organic Chemistry. For me it was easier to pick up work loading and unloading trucks than it was for me to study.

Go to classes today? Go unload trucks? I went for the money too many times.

Those same jobs pay nearly the same thing today. It was good money then but it is entirely inadequate today. The pay did not keep up with inflation

Oh yeah, gasoline was almost free. I could drive my crappy car all over the place. When I was traveling with friends or siblings we rarely thought about the price of gasoline.

On top of this, I had some very serious mental health issues. When I wasn't functional my fallback mode was homeless guy. I was asked to take leave of college twice, but eventually I managed to graduate. It took nine years, but I quit high school for college so I had a bit of a head start. I think colleges today wouldn't have accepted me, much less allowed me to return after screwing up. Without college I may have deterirorated into a homeless guy of some sort. During one bad spell I lived in my broken car in a church parking lot, another time in a shed in someone's backyard.

But I also know damned well I lived in a bubble of white male privilige. I wasn't so aware of it then.

[hedgehog]

31. My sad story - My husband and I both benefited from the old-style NYSE Regents' Scholarships -

Up to your total tuition for any college or university in New York, depending on family income divided by the number of college students in the family! All you had to do was pass a number of the Regents' college prep courses. It wasn't perfect - large city schools might have only one or two graduates eligible. (Rather embarrassing for the city school districts. Almost 40 years later, they're still a mess! )

We lived in Ohio at the time, and I still recall my in-laws approval of a plan to discard the Regents' scholarships in favor of a Tuition Assistance Plan based on family income. All they focused on was that their taxes were supposed to go down. They were positive that rich people could pay tuition, and of course, their grandchildren wouldn't be affected!

Fast forward to my kids going to college at New York State Universities. Right now the biggest chunk of my income is going to paying off student loans. While I get some deductions and tax credits, the FAFSA doesn't ask about existing loans when calculating family contribution to college costs. All but one the kids who have graduated are still paying off student loans, and the two married kids' spouses still have loans. Add to that, one kid is unemployed and one is under-employed.

Back when I had those kids - college costs were very reasonable. the massive tuition inflation hadn't happened yet.

[phantom power]

32. "We weren’t Horatio Algers. We were socialists."