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The numbers don't necessarily represent how people put themselves through college, on average — it's just an apples-to-apples comparison of what it would take t

• quacked 6y ago
  Right, but I'm saying I don't think his numbers are correct. Either it was also not possible on average to put yourself through college in 1986, similar to how it's not possible on average to put yourself through college today, or his numbers are wrong. In fact, I bet it wasn't actually possible to put yourself through college in 1986. I bet the people who put themselves through college went between 1950 and 1975.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    His numbers are correct, because they never actually claimed that it was possible (on average) to put yourself through college in 1986. > In fact, I bet it wasn't actually possible to put yourself through college in 1986. Possibly, the numbers don't claim otherwise. They just compare the median teenage wage to the net tuition of the time — across 2 different snapshots.
    • quacked 6y ago
      Ah, I see.
    • xg15 6y ago
      > His numbers are correct, because they never actually claimed that it was possible (on average) to put yourself through college in 1986. I can't validate the numbers but that would make your claim from earlier highly misleading: > It's a little harder to pay for college on a teenage wage than it may have been 35 years ago, but not that much harder. That's technically correct in the sense that it was already almost impossible back then and only got slightly more impossible today.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        No, the whole point is "not much as changed". The narrative that one could pay their way through all of college is one that likely never really existed for a broad enough population outside of a brief unreproducible period after WW2 where the entire world was in ruins and the US was the sole supplier of all goods & services globally.
  • notacoward 6y ago
    I can attest that was pretty hard in 1981, even at in-state rates.