"It's impossible to work your way through college nowadays"...is the hard-to-swallow (but not entirely surprising) conclusion of Randal Olson's research into just how extreme national tuition costs have become in the US. As The Atlantic notes, the economic cards are stacked such that today’s average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete at least 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his courses.
To better measure the cost of tuition, Olson links to a Reddit discussion of cost per "credit hours" -
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. The Reddit user quantified the rising cost of tuition by cost per credit hour:
This is interesting. A credit hour in 1979 at MSU was 24.50, adjusted for inflation that is 79.23 in today dollars. One credit hour today costs 428.75.
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7 comments:
not impossible, i know people doing it
This is not entirely accurate. I just graduated a year ago after working my way through school. It sucked, I had to work full time and give up most of my social life but I did it.
Which is precisely why hiring standards have been lowered.Good or even great technical skills don't necessarily have a degree attached,and by hiring a non grad an employer is only paying one salary.Paying his/her salary plus enough to enable the employee to repay their college loan is not economically feasible.
This is NOT true! Yes, college costs have gone up in a ridiculous way, and it is awful. But, you can absolutely put yourself through college - it won't be easy, but it can be done. Let me show you using WorWic and SU as an option with a fairly smart kid - A average, 1100 on the SAT (not a genius by any means, but certainly a smart kid).
1. $8/hr. job x 40 hrs a week (in the summer for 12 weeks), and 20 hours a week during the school year for 30 weeks = $8,640/yr.
Do this for 4 years and you have over $30,000.
2. WorWic for 2 years @ $90/credit (although with an 1100 on the SATs, you would pay nearly nothing) would cost $5,400.
3. An "A" student at WorWic, with those SAT scores would get the Presidential Scholarship at SU ($3,500 off each year). The tuition and fees at SU (which is a real University with real research and everything) is $8500/yr. Subtract out the $3,500 and you are looking at $10,000 for two years.
4. That makes your total college tuition and fees $15,400. Now, you are going to have to add a few thousand dollars for books, parking on campus, etc. But, lets say you add another $5,000. That means you pay a little over $20,000. But, you have made $33,000 with your 20 hour a week job during the school year, and your full time job during the summer.
Joila! You can in fact put yourself through college. It isn't easy, you probably have to live at home with mom and dad, you don't get to live high on the hog, but you can do it.
Now, if you go to one of the schools they mention in the article well, then, at $40,000 a year for college you can't put yourself through school.
Bottom line: do well in high school, and make smart choices.
Thank You 10:40 previous graduates missed the entire point of the article.
10:40-If your college loan co signer dies or files for bankruptcy,the lender can suddenly demand that the loan be paid in full or put the loan in default.This applies even if the agreed payments are being made on time.Not a good deal however it's done.
3:05 - what are you talking about? The whole point of what I wrote was that you don't have to take out loans to go to college.
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