Next time someone says students should work their way through college, show them this map

atomom
Sat, 05 Sep 2015 15:30:50 +0000

The problem is that most people who say “Work your way through college like I did back in the 60s/70s/80s,” don’t understand (unless they have kids in college themselves, and even some of those parents don’t understand) how the cost of college has increased disproportionately to the cost of most other things (besides healthcare. . .)
Yes, minimum wage has gone up. It is 2.5 times what it when I was in college in the early 80s, but if you look at inflation adjusted wages, http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/minimum-wage-since-1938/ you can see that the $3.10-3.35/hr I made back then is quite comparable to today’s minimum wage (value of about $7.50-8.50/hr).

I went to a state university (not flagship, but “public ivy”/not commuter school) and the total cost for tuition/fees/room/board my freshman year was about $3,500, which increased to about $4,000 by senior year. I worked many hours at minimum wage jobs during high school, in college, and 50+ hours a week in the summers. I was able to “work my way through college,” as did my sister and many other students–some taking out very small loans if they weren’t so frugal or didn’t work as many hours during the school year or hadn’t saved money during high school. That might still be possible today IF college costs had increased by about 2.5 times along with the general inflation rate. In that scenario, my college would now cost $8,500 -10,000/year to attend, including tuition/fees/room/board. What does it actually cost for in-state students? Just looked it up: $25,000. That means that college costs have gone up about 3 times as much as everything else. That’s why kids can’t work their way through college. It is not the minimum wage.