12 ms·

It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

200 points by frostmatthew 13y ago

rverghes 13y ago
I bet half the audience sees this as an indictment of tuition increases, and the the other half sees this as an indictment of the lack of minimum wage increases. I know what the author is trying to convey, but I'm not sure he has the best metric.
- btilly 13y ago
  His metric is perfect for his purpose. "Here is how the time commitment required for working through college has changed over time. Your past experience many years ago is no longer relevant." He wasn't saying what we should or should not do about it. Merely that working through college on standard college jobs is no longer a viable option.
- wyager 13y ago
  >I bet half the audience sees this as an indictment of tuition increases, and the the other half sees this as an indictment of the lack of minimum wage increases. There's a group who sees this as an indictment of the excessive student loans propping up the college bubble.
- ZenoArrow 13y ago
  I see it as another sign that colleges are ripe for a shake up. Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view): 1. Access to information. 2. Directed learning. 3. Time to explore your own interests. 4. Research facilities. 5. Qualifications. Access to information is easy enough outside college (books, Internet, etc...). Lack of research facilities is only really a hindrance if you're trying to study a hard science or engineering. Time to explore your own interests is easy enough without college, in the worst case you could borrow money, not pay college tuition fees, and study just as long. So that leaves two remaining benefits (and arguably only one benefit to real learning); directed learning and qualifications. The college system directs you towards the ideas in a field that are deemed as key to understanding the subject more fully. Having access to mentors gives the students guidance and reassurance. Qualifications are seen as the reward for the work (not by everyone, it's possible to study for the fun of it too, but that just preaching to the choir on a site like HN). The requirement for colleges for certain qualifications would be easy to fix. The main factor that is lacking from non-college learning is the directed learning aspect. It can be fun to learn a little bit of everything, but colleges can bring you up to speed in something quicker because of this guru-led focus. If/when mavens from a field are simple to interact with, efficient learning is unlocked. The "hacker" community is a great example of this, we have all the resources at our disposal, including access to the leading lights, no other group has it quite as good. Now imagine how other fields could grow with the same blend of learning opportunities that our group has.
  - dalke 13y ago
    You left out physical access to peers. We formed study groups, and meeting in person to discuss and work through problem sets can be much more effective than mediated through telepresence. It would have been harder for me to graduate without that. It's also hard to get a degree in most arts (eg. fine arts, dance, drama, and music) without physical interactions and without access to the physical resources that a university can provide. Yet that doesn't fall under any of your 5 categories. Perhaps #4 is the closest, but you argue that it's only really relevant to hard science or engineering. Your last bit sounds more utopian than with basis in reality. I don't see why it's any harder to contact leading lights in chemistry, biology, mathematics, philosophy, history, or poetry than it is hackers. Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers.
    - ZenoArrow 13y ago
      > Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers. Perhaps 'leading lights' was a bit of a stretch, but the reality is there are many people in the hacker community that spend a good amount of time helping others to learn. Whether that's through blogs, hackerspaces, IRC, sites like StackOverflow, etc... there's a wide range of people helping others out. Why does this happen? Beyond feeling good about it, there's another benefit, a good question from a novice can help a more experienced practitioner deepen their own understanding. These benefits need not only apply to hackers, they can apply to any skillset. The potential for resources that facilitate this exists, and in fact such arragements do exist elsewhere in more chaotic forms, but I'd argue the path for development as hackers is clearer than in many other fields (at the moment). > fine arts, dance, drama, and music What physical resources do you need to study such subjects? Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals would be hard outside college? > You left out physical access to peers. Yes I did. I see the social benefits of learning with peers, and I'm sure that makes learning more fun, but why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange in a more straightforward way (hackerspaces being a good example)?
- gohrt 13y ago
  The author being right 2 different ways doesn't make it less right.
primitivesuave 13y ago
I had a well-paying software internship for most of my time in college, and still left college with ~$30k of debt. Even while making $600/week, it wasn't possible to manage living expenses and tuition payments without taking loans.
- gohrt 13y ago
  $30k total debt, to enable your future career, is nothing to be complaining about. That's ~$50/month service.
  - jonalmeida 13y ago
    Exactly, I just found out that a friend is finishing her studies with 100k in debt. I'm not saying that it's the worst scenario out there, but it makes you feel grateful for incurring a relatively lower amount.
  - dalke 13y ago
    It's certainly something to be complaining about. It may enable a career, but not always, and the career may be enough to pay off a loan, but not always. At the very least, $30K of debt is a lot to have hanging over one's head for years. Consider also those who are 3 years into the degree and decide that field isn't for them, and they want to leave school - that's nearly $20k down the toilet which will be hard to pay back. BTW, your logic applies equally well to indentured servants. (Years of labor enables free passage to the US and the chance for one's own farm at the end.) Since I don't like the concept of debt bondage, I distrust logic which supports it.
  - primitivesuave 13y ago
    This is true, but I honestly felt towards the end that I was discovering more on my own, or through my internship, than I was at school. The only justification I got for spending out-of-state-tuition types of money in the last year, was the opportunity to learn from one great professor. I'm definitely not complaining about $30k, I just wish there was some way I could directly pay one brilliant person like the one great professor, so they could speak at me in an intelligent way and give me new perspective on things that I read in a textbook.
pg_is_a_butt 13y ago
the work start well before college starts. i worked my way through college, and it's just as possible today as it was 15 years ago. you're an idiot. it's impossible for you not to be an idiot.
mrxd 13y ago
Here's another graph showing that the recent rise in tuition in Michigan is due to declining state education appropriations. http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png
- johnbellone 13y ago
  So for the last ten years there was a decline of ~51% in appropriations, but the tuition cost has actually declined. Do you mean a rise in the net revenue? Maybe I'm a bit confused with the graph.
jliptzin 13y ago
Maybe when employers start to figure out that smart, hard working people exist who don't have college degrees and can do the job just as good as ivy leaguers, then we may finally start to see tuition costs come down to earth. Disclaimer: I have a degree from a top school
- thothamon 13y ago
  There aren't very many people who can do complex CS jobs. Or rather, there are a lot of people who claim they can do it because they read a "Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours" book, but who actually can only do the job poorly or not at all. I know because I've been one of these people and I've known many of them. Everyone has to start at zero in any profession, so this is not a negative. I respect everyone who tries to learn something, and God bless "Teach Yourself" books. But becoming a good computer programmer takes many years of hard work. A raw student who didn't already have a few successful projects using technology X would very likely cost an employer more than he/she would benefit the employer. Hiring such an intern has to be thought of as pro-bono work, or perhaps an investment in a future employee. With very occasional exception, undergrad interns in any profession don't deserve much above minimum wage.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Ivy Leaguers are doing fine. Why are people paying (borrowing) $40k-$50k /yr to attend a non-IvyLeague school?
wudf 13y ago
I didn't realize this was ever possible outside community colleges.
- ronnier 13y ago
  I worked my way through school for both my undergraduate degree and a masters in computer science. It wasn't bad. Just have to work hard. The nice thing was, I finished up school with zero debt.
  - dtmooreiv 13y ago
    When did you do this?
    - ronnier 13y ago
      I finished at the end of 2008.
    - WriteYourRep 13y ago
      I worked my way through university from 2006-2010. I was able to pay for my freshman year due to a gift from grandparents and random saving (2005-2006). Spring 2006 I got a full time job with the university. I worked for the school because they give great benefits to full time employees. My tuition was cut from ~6k/semester to ~2k. I was making more than minimum wage, nearly double at the time at $13/hour. This helped, but I kept everything cheap. My apartment was $300/mo, phone, food, and insurance was less than $400. That left me with nearly $1000 left each month. It wasn't easy and it wasn't glamourous. I worked 8-5 every day and went to class in the evenings until 8 or 9.
      - dobbsbob 13y ago
        How did you do assignments? I was given about 2hrs work per lecture, and usually a long term project as well so would do around 5-6hrs of after school work often longer if I was stuck on some essay writing. Phil essay/argument to write, 2 chapters in Phys to do, 2 Math chapters, write a polisci essay and read 3 chapters, then churning out a small program while working on the midterm larger program was a typical night.
h1karu 13y ago
I'll just leave this here: http://www.geekation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Geekation_NoamChomskyEducationDebt.jpg http://www.geekation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Geekatio...
- gohrt 13y ago
  Perhaps Noam Chomsky should stop drawing a salary from those tuition-paying students.
  - alecdbrooks 13y ago
    As a professor emeritus at MIT, he doesn't. [0] It isn't clear how much faculty salaries contribute to the problem anyway, so I don't think it's hypocritical for professors critiquing tuition increases to accept a salary. [0]: http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub1 http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub1
glenra 13y ago
That chart assumes the only option available is to work minimum wage jobs. Which seems nuts, especially when one takes into consideration the possibility of working full-time during the summer at a real job in one's area of specialization. What you need to chart this is some measure of how much college students actually are earning over time, not a measure of the lowest wage it's legally permissible to pay them.
- jliptzin 13y ago
  I think what's relevant is the trend. You do have a good point, but it seems plausible to me that the same proportion of college students today are working minimum-wage jobs compared to 40 years ago, with the higher paying jobs breaking along the same rough percentages. It would be interesting to see the data on that though.
- mason240 13y ago
  That was actually my first thought as well, but came to an opposite conclusion: it's even harder now for students because there are no jobs above MW. Today there are MW jobs, and there are middle-class 40/year jobs, but there not much in between. I'm 30 so I don't know for certain about the past, but the only higher than MW job I could find when in school 4 years ago was delivering pizza.
  - randomdata 13y ago
    > there are no jobs above MW. I'm not sure that the math works out. 4% of those with high school educations, but not a degree, work a minimum wage job. That works out to about 8M people. At the same time, there are ~14M people enrolled in college. So even if we assume every single one of those 8M minimum wage jobs are filled by people who are in college, that still leaves 6M people who are either unemployed or making more. And if we make that assumption, that also means everyone who is not enrolled in college and has a high school education is making more than minimum wage.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  CS people are probably in a somewhat unique position where that is somewhat possible. If you study something that isn't tied to a specific industry or where you need many years of training and certification to become useful that's not so tenable.
TreyS 13y ago
Also important to note that this is talking about the time to pay tuition alone. When you add living expenses, it's even more absurd.
wyager 13y ago
CS student at a state school here. Top internships can expect to make $20K gross, $14-15K after taxes and expenses. Most internships are closer to $12K gross, maybe $8-9K after taxes and expenses (the higher paying internships tend to be in more expensive areas). There are a few oddities that pay more, and for longer periods, but these are what you can expect in general. Housing+tuition is around $18K for in-state students. If you wanted to pay off your entire annual dues without taking out a single loan or getting support from family, you would probably have to work part-time for at least one semester, possibly two. Of course, there are a fair number of students who pay for school by being self-employed; a number of my classmates make sufficient advertising or sales revenue to cover the entire annual cost of college.
macshaggy 13y ago
Forget minimum wage. I work a full time way above minimum wage and two things make it hard for me at school. a) tuition is a beast but at least my job as some reimbursement – though it pays for a semester 6 hours. b) the school barely has any classes geared towards someone who works. I know I could have gone to school at a technical school I did that years ago and I don’t recommend it. I went back over 5 years ago and did community college first. I received my Associates and that allowed me to transfer right into a four year institution as a junior. But every class that I need now about half are never taught until after 10:00 am and before 3:00 pm. Guess what I have to be at work for my job. Now my company supports me going to school but its almost like the school doesn’t support me going to work. They state they have an Adult Ed center where I can get help but guess what it closes at 5:00 pm?!? I don’t understand how you are supposed to have an AE center to help people who work but then you are not open to help them when they need it. I almost feel penalized for not working at night but how can I give up (and really why should I give up) working at a great job. The school states that they have more evening classes for the Grad students but what about us Undergrads don’t we need evening classes? At least back in the 90′s (when I should have been in school), and in CA, I could have taken every Undergrad course at night. It would have taken me 6 – 7 years to earn a BS in Computer Science now I’m on year 8 and I still have a couple years to go at this rate. Why am I being penalized? is the real question…oh and I’m earning straight A’s and I’m on the Chancellor’s/Dean’s list. But it doesn’t make sense to me.
- vacri 13y ago
  the school barely has any classes geared towards someone who works. Reminds me of my time hitting the books. We complained about our schedules that had huge gaps in them, like a one-hour lecture in the morning, then four or five hours later, another lecture in the afternoon. Why couldn't they be scheduled more closely? The response was "You are full-time students. You are expected to be free from 8 to 5" So we replied "Why then is our main lecture set assigned for 7pm? That's outside this 8 to 5 timeframe" (evening was popular with part timers) The response was... crickets. There weren't many contact hours - 20-25/week - but they were somewhat hostile to people being able to work at the same time.
jdreaver 13y ago
We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. When some people read articles like this, they call for more government aid to students. "We need to help young, hard working students from unprivileged backgrounds to pay for college!" Their hearts are certainly in the right place, and it isn't an unreasonable idea at first glance. However, could this idea be part of the problem? Maybe giving people free money for college isn't the best idea. There are four ways to spend money: 1) You spend your own money on yourself 2) You spend someone else's money on yourself 3) You spend your money on someone else 4) You spend someone else's money on someone else When you spend your own money on yourself, you are very selective with how that money is spent. Not only do you gain from what you buy, you also lose money you could use to buy other things. The other three situations are ones in which being selective isn't as important to the spender. Why does this matter? When people pay for college themselves, we are in situation 1; they have an incentive to choose a college they can afford while still being a great place to learn. When a student gets free money proportional to tuition, they can choose a school that charges ridiculously high rates for tuition. (Student loans are a middle ground. They are still spending money on themselves, but people the age of college students tend to be more frivolous with loans than money they earned, so they are still less interested in the price.) The more students that get free money for college, the higher the cost of college becomes, because the equilibrium price of college gets distorted. If all student aid disappeared tomorrow, then certainly the cost of college would decrease. If colleges get more money, then where does it go? Certainly not directly to education. It goes to fancy buildings to impress donors, and supporting the ultimate cash cow: government research grants. It goes to inflating the administrative staffs and inflating the salaries of the highest ranked members of that staff. If it was possible to pay for college on minimum wage, I wonder why we ever changed the system.
- bequanna 13y ago
  > It goes to inflating the administrative staffs and inflating the salaries of the highest ranked members of that staff. This. Bureaucratic bloat, no accountability and terrible efficiency. Many Universities are the largest employers in their state. Do our Universities exist to be Research and Educational institutions, or to employ armies of admin workers that push papers?
lnanek2 13y ago
I know he is just crunching numbers for unrelated jobs and unrelated colleges and making a conclusion based on that and no real knowledge, but I know tons of people who worked through college. A lot of them were work study program people, although on the east coast. If you Google the school he talks about, though, you can see they offer a similar program where the college pays half the student's salary: https://finaid.msu.edu/work.asp https://finaid.msu.edu/work.asp So a work study student only costs the employer half as much, and would generally be assumed to be earning a full pay check for working half the time and studying half the time. So it seems very doable. Generally a student with such low income isn't going to be paying full price anyway, so his other number is off too.
chrisbennet 13y ago
Is college important to us as a society? Assuming it (and other forms of further education) are, might we be better off funding state schools to the point that they have an affordable tuition? The upshot of this would be an cost competitive alternative to private schools. The looming debt these students take on now is not going to go away and will remain a drag on their forward progress for decades. Perhaps the collective interest being spent on all these loans might be better spent on actual education.
wmgries 13y ago
There are good arguments to be had about why college is so expensive and exactly how much federal and local money should go to education. It's simply untrue that it's impossible to pay your own way through college - I just did it for the last two and a half of my education. Of course I was making more than minimum wage, but for all but a semester I wasn't making radically above minimum wage (my last summer I worked at a top tech company). I chose to major in an in demand field that I was good at, worked a lot instead of drinking or playing video games, and went to an affordable in state school. Not everybody can make it through college without loans, but if everybody put the same effort into their job and education I did, it should be a worthwhile investment to carry a bit of debt.
wambotron 13y ago
Isn't this just basic supply and demand? There are more students trying to go to university now than there were in the 70s. It's basically become the next version of high school socially (and, sadly, also academically in many cases). What we need is a culture that respects people who want to just work at a factory, a big box store, a mall, whatever, without pushing them into doing something they don't want to do (school). Trade schools also help in this regard. I actually believe we need more push towards trades like plumbing, hvac, and carpentry rather than having more degrees in over-filled areas.
- danpat 13y ago
  The demand is artificially inflated by the ready availability of loan money. Many loans cannot legally be denied. This removes what otherwise would be a barrier to frivolous spending.
  - theorique 13y ago
    And, on the flip side, the loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Therefore, there's a huge incentive on the lender's part to make such a loan. (Similar to NINJA loans and liar loans in the mortgage banking crisis of a few years ago.)
  - Crake 13y ago
    Well, the most you can take out is $5,500 as an 18 year old. They're more than happy to legally deny you any other loans if you don't have the support of a rich family to cosign some private ones for you.
- wpietri 13y ago
  That would be true only if supply were fixed. Many more people want computers now than in the 70s, but prices are much lower.
  - theorique 13y ago
    Supply at the top end is fixed. More and more people want to go to Harvard or Stanford, but it's not as though the supply of super-elite colleges has expanded. What seems to have expanded most is a means of getting a generic "college degree". Compared to that time, there are a lot more low-end places which will accept people with a checkbook (or federal student loan) and a pulse. Also, you can even acquire the knowledge associated with a degree, but without an actual diploma (MOOCs, online learning, etc).
AaronFriel 13y ago
The solution though, isn't to stop providing money to students for college. If you don't have Pell Grants, Stafford loans and the like, lower income bracket individuals would never be able to afford college. There is a simple fact: I could not pay my way through my Midwest university education without these things. I will graduate and be in debt, but I'll be better off having done it. Certainly the experience is worthwhile. The solution though, as some people propose, is not to end subsidies for lower income individuals. I see several people putting forth the argument that people are the most efficient at allocating money for themselves. That is not true except in an Ayn Rand novel. If people were so rational, everyone would go to college because the expected value of college still dwarfs the cost of college. Even for those individuals who would graduate with a significant amount of debt, it is far more worth it to have a degree than not. So, how would a society reduce the cost of college education without removing the supports that enable low income individuals to enroll? Instead of giving colleges free money, we need to re-orient our structure of providing support for students that need it so that the college has the right incentives. For example, tying the cost of college to graduate's earnings. Right now, a university gets money merely for pursuing higher levels of enrollment. There is no financial incentive for the university to involve students in student organizations, in leadership roles in their community, in politics or in networking. There is a tenuous link between those activities and pursuing alumni programs, but from what I've seen, alumni programs are a post-hoc solution to funding. A university sees an alumnus has done very well, and seeks to share in their wealth. Let's simplify: the cost of a college education is 3-5% of aggregate gross income for the rest of your life. People who go on to be tremendously successful will benefit their university, and the university will have an incentive to churn out more tremendously successful people. This tax could be enforced by the IRS, automatically deducted in most cases, and manually reported elsewhere. Now no one has to worry about the stress of student loans, and universities have every incentive to provide the highest quality education possible to maximize the value of their students. No more flooding the rosters of the university with under- and unqualified adjuncts in order to support higher enrollment numbers at lower costs to pad the pockets of administration. No more cutting student involvement to pad the athletics program.
- eigenvector 13y ago
  > If people were so rational, everyone would go to college because the expected value of college still dwarfs the cost of college. No, the expected value of a college degree is a result of a labour supply/demand curve and it wouldn't remain the same if you drastically shifted the supply curve. If everyone went to college, the additional earning power of a college graduate relative to the mean would be zero.
briantakita 13y ago
It seems like there are needed alternatives to & reforms in secondary education. The secondary education industry needs to remove the fluff and drive more value & relevancy to it's customers. The premise must be shifted toward students being able to choose their educational path. General requirements are expensive and a waste of money for students. Learning is a lifelong process. Students need to become self-motivated to educate themselves, instead of depending on a curriculum defined by authorities. General requirements are coercive because the student does not choose to learn these subjects. This means the student will be less engaged. There needs to be more emphasis on cross-functional & student inspired collaboration. Examples are engineering students collaborate with artists to create something. History students collaborate with theater & film students to create historical movies. Encourage professors, grad students, and undergrad students to collaborate on active research & projects. Remove the notion that GPA intrinsically means anything other than someone is good at playing the school game. Make the goals more in line with life after college. A portfolio of interesting projects says more about someone than a GPA.
gmays 13y ago
I graduated college in California late 2005/early 2006 (winter semester). My whole degree cost somewhere around $5,000 to $6,000. We didn't have much money, so I lived at home for the duration, went to a junior/community college for 1 year, then transferred to a local state college for another 18 months to graduate in a total of about 2.5 years. During that time I only took one summer off to work full-time. During the school year I didn't work much because the way the school counted credits I could take as many courses as I wanted at the fixed full-time student rate as long as I 1) received approval from the professors and 2) maintained a certain GPA. So I'd just load up on a ridiculous number of classes and spend my days and nights in the library. The girl I was dating lived across the street from the school, so I'd just spend most weeknights with her to save the commute. Even though the cost of my college education was low by any measure, we (my family) could still barely afford it and I almost had to drop out. I distinctly remember the conversation where my mom told me that she may not be able to afford to keep sending me to school. You'd think being a mix of Black, Mexican and Native American and being on the honor roll every year I'd have had a scholarship of some sort, but nope. Anyway, last year I was back home visiting family and spoke to a buddy's girlfriend about her educational plans since she was going to the same community college I went to. The cost per credit hour is now about 3X what I paid just 8 years ago! WTF!? I'm not sure how much the fees have increased at the 4-year state school, but I can only imagine. I was completely blown away. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had no idea education prices had increased so much, especially at community colleges.
- FG_Regulus 13y ago
  Wow - my degree lands me a beautiful $8k every year (2 semesters). But it gets better. I thought about improving myself in high school by going into early college. A free AA degree and at the same time as my HS diploma? Hell yeah! They didn't tell me that almost none of the credits would apply to my degree because 4-year degrees have almost every single course planned - so I still have 4 years to go... Oh and the feds just made a law that says if you take to long your tuition doubles. So for about the last year of my college that's $16k instead. Oh yeah, and we forgot. This state school requires every single student to take 9 credit hours in the summer - where summers aren't covered by any federal loans. So that's a lovely $40k pile of debt on me by the time I graduate. EDIT: Oops, included living costs, not just tuition. Living cost is about $8k-$12k a year. So the real total of debt is $72k.
jonalmeida 13y ago
This is my biggest concern since I'm currently a third year at university. It's only by luck that that I'm in a field that pays above minimum wage and it currently in demand for interns. For others retrospect: I got an 8 month internship after my second year and saved up enough money to pay for my next semester and some savings. Following that semester, I took another 8 month internship with the same process. I'm now finishing my third year (so to speak) and I intend to get another 4 month internship so I can use my remaining savings for a last full year of tuition and spending. I can't encourage enough that more people should look for and apply for internships for this reason alone if no other. I hate the idea of being in debt and this seems like the only way to survive. EDIT: Grammar
spullara 13y ago
I think it is pretty clearly the fault of student loans, roughly akin to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Home prices went up because anyone could get a loan to buy them even if they couldn't afford them.
blueblob 13y ago
Why do you need to work your way through college? Get a loan, Take more credit-hours per term, and pick a field that will give you a greater pay increase and your work will be worth a lot more (per hour) when you graduate. I understand this is an oversimplification because some people can't get loans/grants.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fiatmoney 13y ago
The idea of consumption smoothing & college as a human capital investment (particularly in an arena with outsized rewards at the top end, which is now most areas with decent payoffs) imply that to the extent you don't absolutely have to, you shouldn't work through college. Other than perhaps connection-building internships during the summer, but those aren't really about the money.
bane 13y ago
On the flip side, if you have a degree, this means fewer people can afford it and your degree becomes all the more valuable over time. I've had a similar, but different thing happen as the state school I went to has shot up in the arbitrary US News and World Reports college rankings list over the last 20 years. It enabled them to finance a bunch of new construction (research buildings, classrooms, specialized degree satellite campuses), all new dorms, etc. What used to be basically a small commuter school that happened to offer university (Masters and Doctorates) degrees has turned into the largest university in the the State. The prestige it's offered my resume has gotten me endless recruitment offers and I ended up just taking it off my facebook profile I was getting contacted by too many people I didn't know wanting to form various alumni networks. At any rate, rising tuition, etc. just means that what I already received is becoming a more valuable investment. I like that. But I also feel empathy towards those going into college, knowing what a huge boost it was to my income earning potential. I worked my way through college, Pell Grants, a few loans. I was doing an 2x minimum wage internship my last 2 years that made it suck, but doable. I made enough after graduation that I paid off my loans in just a couple years. It was really tight though. I think it's still very possible to do at the state school level if you get the loans. But it's definitely getting harder. I couldn't imagine doing it at the private school or out of state level back then, and I can't imagine doing it today.
patrickg_zill 13y ago
I think this graphic might point towards some of the reason that college is so pricy: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png http://www.oftwominds.com/photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png Although it is somewhat cynical...
misterS 13y ago
> Most students take 12 credit hours per semester and only attend Fall and Spring semester. That’s 24 credit hours per year. 24 credits a year?! I am curious, is this really the norm in the US? At the universitiy I attended in mainland Europe you were excpected to do 30 credits each semester, so 60 CP a year.
- TheCoelacanth 13y ago
  US credits and ECTS credits don't mean the same thing. A US credit is roughly equivalent to 2 ECTS credits in terms of amount of time spent. Additionally, 12 credit hours is an unusually small amount of credits to take. That's usually the minimum amount to qualify as a full-time student. If you want to graduate in the normal amount of time you have to take more like 16 credit hours per semester.
geogra4 13y ago
The University of California charged NO TUITION until the 1970s. Think about that for a second. While we bicker and boast on here about bootstraps and how to pay off debt by living like a pauper we have to realize that we are straight up being stolen from. There is no reason why public universities should cost 10s of thousands of dollars for a 4 year degree. That's the whole reason they exist in the first place.
- tedsanders 13y ago
  Just because the price is zero doesn't mean the cost is zero. The main reason that college tuition has risen in America is that it become less and less subsidized by state governments. It's not straight up theft when that subsidy gets reduced.
deleted 13y ago
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truelove 13y ago
Pay your way through college? Of course you can. You just have be able to to think outside the box. And if Belle Knox can do it, you can do it: - http://www.sbindependent.org/belle-knoxs-lust-education/ http://www.sbindependent.org/belle-knoxs-lust-education/ - http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/college-student-pays-ivy-league-tuition-smut-money/ http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/colleg...
davidf18 13y ago
In years past, states contributed a much larger proportion of public school budgets than they do today. Much of that money now goes towards Medicaid. Much of that Medicaid money does not go towards the poor but rather middle class who go to nursing homes. They spend down their assets and transfer them to their children. Hence, at least partially because of the middle class not buying nursing home insurance, the public universities are being deprived of their funding. Nowadays, City University of New York tuition reportedly is $3000 per semester. At least in some fields (eg Engineering) you can get a very good education there I am told.
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  This is where I'm reminded of my disconnect: City College of NY was my "safety school." Back then it was $800/semester and I would have been commuting from our apartment in Brooklyn, so no meals/residency costs. This situation has gotten insane.
- Crake 13y ago
  I actually moved from the midwest to NYC for exactly that reason. I can't afford the in state public university in my home state, so I had to move here, as ridiculous as that sounds. Luckily, NYC is not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be. I pay about $200/month more in living expenses, but it's $10,000/year cheaper to go to school here and I get free health care through medicaid (important since I have a very painful health condition). I have no family support, so I have to make it work through, well, work and what little money I can get from federal financial aid. I'm really grateful CCNY still exists to provide me a path out of poverty. However, they're hiking tuition by $800/year for the next few years, so soon it'll be unaffordable, too...
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  Seems to me that states which are cutting education the most are doing it out of a slavish determination to balance their state budgets at all costs to score national political points. Here in Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has given away what would have been billions of tax dollars to private industry with little to show for it, cut income and corporate taxes, slashed medical spending for the poor and indigent, and raided medical funds which were supposed to last decades all in order to fuel his idiotic political agenda. Universities have had to close entire departments in order to make ends meet, and some regional schools have even contemplated the idea of becoming junior colleges. This is at a time when the state was largely shielded from the larger national economic downturn because of the economic boom that happened during the recovery from Katrina. He will go down as the worst governor in at least the last half century, which is quite a feat, given that Kathleen Blanco and Edwin Edwards occupied the governor's mansion for nearly half that time.
gedrap 13y ago
I am finishing my last year at Uni of Manchester (UK), and coming from a poor family in Eastern Europe. On one hand, it really sucks that I can't really afford to focus mainly on education because I have no plan B regarding money and have spent enough time being totally broke. It was a bit crushing experience when I knew I could do much better, if I could spend more time on it. But on other hand, that experience of working my up definitely helped me to grow up as a person. Which maybe is much more valuable, then the technical skills and the degree?
aspensmonster 13y ago
Actually, I think HN user mrxd hit the nail on the head here: >Here's another graph showing that the recent rise in tuition in Michigan is due to declining state education appropriations. >http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png ==================================== DING DING DING! Why did I have to scroll to the bottom to see this? As far as I'm concerned this is the major symptom that few people ever look at, much less ever try to think of a root cause for. The states, nearly all of which have to "balance the budget" every budget period, have to find ways to make cuts when economic downturns hit. Seeing as so much of what used to be the purview of the state has been captured by the private sector under the guise of "we can do it better, just let us handle it," the only major expense left to the state other than healthcare is education. When legislatures are faced with a choice of cutting Healthcare or Education, which one do you think is going to get the bigger axe? Which demographic does more voting? The not-of-age children and teenagers? The politically charged college students that paradoxically never seem to actually make it to the voting booth? Their parents perhaps? The same ones that love to hate on public education and talk about how terrible it is? Or... Is it the hundreds of thousands of individuals that rely on the state for medical assistance in one way or another? It's not a surprise at all that education gets the short end of the stick. It is the politically expedient answer in the face of economic downturns, when already-stretched state social programs are tasked further still. But the real clincher is this: the state legislatures know that the federal government will pick up the tab; it is ultimately the guarantor of the loans it issues. Better yet, since the liabilities were shifted onto the students individually, the state legislatures don't even look like they had to seek the help of the Big Government they're all so keen to hate! And best of all, thanks to the continued infusion of capital from the federal government, their state institutions actually have the outward appearance of growth: new buildings, renovations, fancy stadiums and gyms and elite professors. Of course, this is all on the backs of young students. And as a young 20-something, I'd like to know why the federal government agreed to balance states' budgets on the backs of its youths at all, much less without price controls. Just who is benefiting from such a laissez-faire attitude? It certainly doesn't feel like I am.
- zymhan 13y ago
  I had to scroll halfway down the page to find your comment, which still depressed me. As another young 20-something, I always wonder why people are so quick to use the "administrative bloat" or "federal loans" arguments when discussing rising tuition. The data seems to clearly support the relation between state funding and tuition costs, and yet less substantiated claims continue to rise to the top. Do I think college administrations could stand to lay off some people? Sure. Does that mean that those extra employees are the reason I'm saddled with $40k in loans? Hell no. If you don't want to pitch in to fund college educations, then fine, but don't act like the reason students are paying more isn't because of you.
ballard 13y ago
So a guy I know took his Yale scholarship, bought a boat and sails around the world and made the diff by working summers. Can't do that anymore.
morgante 13y ago
It's certainly a troubling trend, but it's not as troubling as it seems. One huge factor is the corresponding increase in financial aid, particularly at top institutions——if you came from a poor family several decades ago, you would have had to work your way through Harvard, now you will get full aid and can even get grants for summer activities. That's honestly a huge boon to meritocracy which we should not forget about. All these people pushing for the elimination of aid and a shift to market mechanisms need to seriously consider the impact that a zero-aid, market-based system would have: a return to a time when only the wealthy could attend great institutions and everyone else is relegated to community colleges and second-tier state universities. That's what market mechanisms are great at: matching products to people's ability to pay. I dearly hope we don't actually want that for our country. It undermines the very meritocracy we pride ourselves on——if we can't get an equal education, regardless of economic ability, then the rest of the market-based American economy is a sham of wealth perpetuation. --------- On a completely different note, I do actually think it is possible to work full-time during college. I've done so for the past year, in a fairly intense job capacity. I'll be graduating with enough money in the bank for the down payment on a small house.
- FG_Regulus 13y ago
  White kid from the lower middle-class. 4.7 high school with all honors and graduating with an AA. Had to start almsot completely over classes-wise because of the structure of the CS degree so what should have been 3 years is now 4 years at $16k a year. And $24k for the last year because of the new "if you go over X hours in your degree you pay double tuition" rule. So $72k of debt stepping out of that door. Almost all the jobs I've had offered are barely above MW, and the internships are the same or unpaid entirely (which is a scam, of course). So good for you - you can get your house. Meanwhile the other half of us cannot work off our debt even if we worked full time and put 100% of our income into paying it off.
  - morgante 13y ago
    I'm also a white kid from the lower middle class. :) Maybe you're not pursuing the right jobs? With a CS degree, even internships should be paying WAY more than minimum wage.
tjmc 13y ago
This isn't true in Australia and many other countries where education costs are more reasonable. I'm in my last semester of a 4 year degree in mechanical engineering. The total tuition cost has been around USD$32K. I've worked the whole way through and will graduate without debt.
- maheart 13y ago
  Educational costs are however drastically increasing in Australia. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia#Commonwealth_supported_students http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aust... e.g. For CS (3 year course), pre-1997 you'd pay ~$9000. Today you'd pay ~21000. Adjusted for inflation, you'd still be paying roughly half in 1996, what you are paying today.
xerophtye 13y ago
Isn't this mostly US centric? The entire conversation in here is all about why colleges are expensive in US. What do the european HNers have to say for their colleges? I hear they are mostly free but the cost-of-living in europe is usally what weighs down foreign students

200 points by frostmatthew 13y ago

I bet half the audience sees this as an indictment of tuition increases, and the the other half sees this as an indictment of the lack of minimum wage increases. I know what the author is trying to convey, but I'm not sure he has the best metric.

btilly 13y ago
His metric is perfect for his purpose. "Here is how the time commitment required for working through college has changed over time. Your past experience many years ago is no longer relevant." He wasn't saying what we should or should not do about it. Merely that working through college on standard college jobs is no longer a viable option.
wyager 13y ago
>I bet half the audience sees this as an indictment of tuition increases, and the the other half sees this as an indictment of the lack of minimum wage increases. There's a group who sees this as an indictment of the excessive student loans propping up the college bubble.
ZenoArrow 13y ago
I see it as another sign that colleges are ripe for a shake up. Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view): 1. Access to information. 2. Directed learning. 3. Time to explore your own interests. 4. Research facilities. 5. Qualifications. Access to information is easy enough outside college (books, Internet, etc...). Lack of research facilities is only really a hindrance if you're trying to study a hard science or engineering. Time to explore your own interests is easy enough without college, in the worst case you could borrow money, not pay college tuition fees, and study just as long. So that leaves two remaining benefits (and arguably only one benefit to real learning); directed learning and qualifications. The college system directs you towards the ideas in a field that are deemed as key to understanding the subject more fully. Having access to mentors gives the students guidance and reassurance. Qualifications are seen as the reward for the work (not by everyone, it's possible to study for the fun of it too, but that just preaching to the choir on a site like HN). The requirement for colleges for certain qualifications would be easy to fix. The main factor that is lacking from non-college learning is the directed learning aspect. It can be fun to learn a little bit of everything, but colleges can bring you up to speed in something quicker because of this guru-led focus. If/when mavens from a field are simple to interact with, efficient learning is unlocked. The "hacker" community is a great example of this, we have all the resources at our disposal, including access to the leading lights, no other group has it quite as good. Now imagine how other fields could grow with the same blend of learning opportunities that our group has.
- dalke 13y ago
  You left out physical access to peers. We formed study groups, and meeting in person to discuss and work through problem sets can be much more effective than mediated through telepresence. It would have been harder for me to graduate without that. It's also hard to get a degree in most arts (eg. fine arts, dance, drama, and music) without physical interactions and without access to the physical resources that a university can provide. Yet that doesn't fall under any of your 5 categories. Perhaps #4 is the closest, but you argue that it's only really relevant to hard science or engineering. Your last bit sounds more utopian than with basis in reality. I don't see why it's any harder to contact leading lights in chemistry, biology, mathematics, philosophy, history, or poetry than it is hackers. Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers.
  - ZenoArrow 13y ago
    > Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers. Perhaps 'leading lights' was a bit of a stretch, but the reality is there are many people in the hacker community that spend a good amount of time helping others to learn. Whether that's through blogs, hackerspaces, IRC, sites like StackOverflow, etc... there's a wide range of people helping others out. Why does this happen? Beyond feeling good about it, there's another benefit, a good question from a novice can help a more experienced practitioner deepen their own understanding. These benefits need not only apply to hackers, they can apply to any skillset. The potential for resources that facilitate this exists, and in fact such arragements do exist elsewhere in more chaotic forms, but I'd argue the path for development as hackers is clearer than in many other fields (at the moment). > fine arts, dance, drama, and music What physical resources do you need to study such subjects? Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals would be hard outside college? > You left out physical access to peers. Yes I did. I see the social benefits of learning with peers, and I'm sure that makes learning more fun, but why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange in a more straightforward way (hackerspaces being a good example)?
gohrt 13y ago
The author being right 2 different ways doesn't make it less right.

primitivesuave 13y ago

I had a well-paying software internship for most of my time in college, and still left college with ~$30k of debt. Even while making $600/week, it wasn't possible to manage living expenses and tuition payments without taking loans.

gohrt 13y ago
$30k total debt, to enable your future career, is nothing to be complaining about. That's ~$50/month service.
- jonalmeida 13y ago
  Exactly, I just found out that a friend is finishing her studies with 100k in debt. I'm not saying that it's the worst scenario out there, but it makes you feel grateful for incurring a relatively lower amount.
- dalke 13y ago
  It's certainly something to be complaining about. It may enable a career, but not always, and the career may be enough to pay off a loan, but not always. At the very least, $30K of debt is a lot to have hanging over one's head for years. Consider also those who are 3 years into the degree and decide that field isn't for them, and they want to leave school - that's nearly $20k down the toilet which will be hard to pay back. BTW, your logic applies equally well to indentured servants. (Years of labor enables free passage to the US and the chance for one's own farm at the end.) Since I don't like the concept of debt bondage, I distrust logic which supports it.
- primitivesuave 13y ago
  This is true, but I honestly felt towards the end that I was discovering more on my own, or through my internship, than I was at school. The only justification I got for spending out-of-state-tuition types of money in the last year, was the opportunity to learn from one great professor. I'm definitely not complaining about $30k, I just wish there was some way I could directly pay one brilliant person like the one great professor, so they could speak at me in an intelligent way and give me new perspective on things that I read in a textbook.

pg_is_a_butt 13y ago

the work start well before college starts. i worked my way through college, and it's just as possible today as it was 15 years ago. you're an idiot. it's impossible for you not to be an idiot.

mrxd 13y ago

Here's another graph showing that the recent rise in tuition in Michigan is due to declining state education appropriations. http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png

johnbellone 13y ago
So for the last ten years there was a decline of ~51% in appropriations, but the tuition cost has actually declined. Do you mean a rise in the net revenue? Maybe I'm a bit confused with the graph.

jliptzin 13y ago

Maybe when employers start to figure out that smart, hard working people exist who don't have college degrees and can do the job just as good as ivy leaguers, then we may finally start to see tuition costs come down to earth. Disclaimer: I have a degree from a top school

thothamon 13y ago
There aren't very many people who can do complex CS jobs. Or rather, there are a lot of people who claim they can do it because they read a "Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours" book, but who actually can only do the job poorly or not at all. I know because I've been one of these people and I've known many of them. Everyone has to start at zero in any profession, so this is not a negative. I respect everyone who tries to learn something, and God bless "Teach Yourself" books. But becoming a good computer programmer takes many years of hard work. A raw student who didn't already have a few successful projects using technology X would very likely cost an employer more than he/she would benefit the employer. Hiring such an intern has to be thought of as pro-bono work, or perhaps an investment in a future employee. With very occasional exception, undergrad interns in any profession don't deserve much above minimum wage.
gohrt 13y ago
Ivy Leaguers are doing fine. Why are people paying (borrowing) $40k-$50k /yr to attend a non-IvyLeague school?

wudf 13y ago

I didn't realize this was ever possible outside community colleges.

ronnier 13y ago
I worked my way through school for both my undergraduate degree and a masters in computer science. It wasn't bad. Just have to work hard. The nice thing was, I finished up school with zero debt.
- dtmooreiv 13y ago
  When did you do this?
  - ronnier 13y ago
    I finished at the end of 2008.
  - WriteYourRep 13y ago
    I worked my way through university from 2006-2010. I was able to pay for my freshman year due to a gift from grandparents and random saving (2005-2006). Spring 2006 I got a full time job with the university. I worked for the school because they give great benefits to full time employees. My tuition was cut from ~6k/semester to ~2k. I was making more than minimum wage, nearly double at the time at $13/hour. This helped, but I kept everything cheap. My apartment was $300/mo, phone, food, and insurance was less than $400. That left me with nearly $1000 left each month. It wasn't easy and it wasn't glamourous. I worked 8-5 every day and went to class in the evenings until 8 or 9.
    - dobbsbob 13y ago
      How did you do assignments? I was given about 2hrs work per lecture, and usually a long term project as well so would do around 5-6hrs of after school work often longer if I was stuck on some essay writing. Phil essay/argument to write, 2 chapters in Phys to do, 2 Math chapters, write a polisci essay and read 3 chapters, then churning out a small program while working on the midterm larger program was a typical night.

h1karu 13y ago

I'll just leave this here: http://www.geekation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Geekation_NoamChomskyEducationDebt.jpg http://www.geekation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Geekatio...

gohrt 13y ago
Perhaps Noam Chomsky should stop drawing a salary from those tuition-paying students.
- alecdbrooks 13y ago
  As a professor emeritus at MIT, he doesn't. [0] It isn't clear how much faculty salaries contribute to the problem anyway, so I don't think it's hypocritical for professors critiquing tuition increases to accept a salary. [0]: http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub1 http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub1

glenra 13y ago

That chart assumes the only option available is to work minimum wage jobs. Which seems nuts, especially when one takes into consideration the possibility of working full-time during the summer at a real job in one's area of specialization. What you need to chart this is some measure of how much college students actually are earning over time, not a measure of the lowest wage it's legally permissible to pay them.

jliptzin 13y ago
I think what's relevant is the trend. You do have a good point, but it seems plausible to me that the same proportion of college students today are working minimum-wage jobs compared to 40 years ago, with the higher paying jobs breaking along the same rough percentages. It would be interesting to see the data on that though.
mason240 13y ago
That was actually my first thought as well, but came to an opposite conclusion: it's even harder now for students because there are no jobs above MW. Today there are MW jobs, and there are middle-class 40/year jobs, but there not much in between. I'm 30 so I don't know for certain about the past, but the only higher than MW job I could find when in school 4 years ago was delivering pizza.
- randomdata 13y ago
  > there are no jobs above MW. I'm not sure that the math works out. 4% of those with high school educations, but not a degree, work a minimum wage job. That works out to about 8M people. At the same time, there are ~14M people enrolled in college. So even if we assume every single one of those 8M minimum wage jobs are filled by people who are in college, that still leaves 6M people who are either unemployed or making more. And if we make that assumption, that also means everyone who is not enrolled in college and has a high school education is making more than minimum wage.
jiggy2011 13y ago
CS people are probably in a somewhat unique position where that is somewhat possible. If you study something that isn't tied to a specific industry or where you need many years of training and certification to become useful that's not so tenable.

TreyS 13y ago

Also important to note that this is talking about the time to pay tuition alone. When you add living expenses, it's even more absurd.

wyager 13y ago

CS student at a state school here. Top internships can expect to make $20K gross, $14-15K after taxes and expenses. Most internships are closer to $12K gross, maybe $8-9K after taxes and expenses (the higher paying internships tend to be in more expensive areas). There are a few oddities that pay more, and for longer periods, but these are what you can expect in general. Housing+tuition is around $18K for in-state students. If you wanted to pay off your entire annual dues without taking out a single loan or getting support from family, you would probably have to work part-time for at least one semester, possibly two. Of course, there are a fair number of students who pay for school by being self-employed; a number of my classmates make sufficient advertising or sales revenue to cover the entire annual cost of college.

macshaggy 13y ago

Forget minimum wage. I work a full time way above minimum wage and two things make it hard for me at school. a) tuition is a beast but at least my job as some reimbursement – though it pays for a semester 6 hours. b) the school barely has any classes geared towards someone who works. I know I could have gone to school at a technical school I did that years ago and I don’t recommend it. I went back over 5 years ago and did community college first. I received my Associates and that allowed me to transfer right into a four year institution as a junior. But every class that I need now about half are never taught until after 10:00 am and before 3:00 pm. Guess what I have to be at work for my job. Now my company supports me going to school but its almost like the school doesn’t support me going to work. They state they have an Adult Ed center where I can get help but guess what it closes at 5:00 pm?!? I don’t understand how you are supposed to have an AE center to help people who work but then you are not open to help them when they need it. I almost feel penalized for not working at night but how can I give up (and really why should I give up) working at a great job. The school states that they have more evening classes for the Grad students but what about us Undergrads don’t we need evening classes? At least back in the 90′s (when I should have been in school), and in CA, I could have taken every Undergrad course at night. It would have taken me 6 – 7 years to earn a BS in Computer Science now I’m on year 8 and I still have a couple years to go at this rate. Why am I being penalized? is the real question…oh and I’m earning straight A’s and I’m on the Chancellor’s/Dean’s list. But it doesn’t make sense to me.

vacri 13y ago
the school barely has any classes geared towards someone who works. Reminds me of my time hitting the books. We complained about our schedules that had huge gaps in them, like a one-hour lecture in the morning, then four or five hours later, another lecture in the afternoon. Why couldn't they be scheduled more closely? The response was "You are full-time students. You are expected to be free from 8 to 5" So we replied "Why then is our main lecture set assigned for 7pm? That's outside this 8 to 5 timeframe" (evening was popular with part timers) The response was... crickets. There weren't many contact hours - 20-25/week - but they were somewhat hostile to people being able to work at the same time.

jdreaver 13y ago

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. When some people read articles like this, they call for more government aid to students. "We need to help young, hard working students from unprivileged backgrounds to pay for college!" Their hearts are certainly in the right place, and it isn't an unreasonable idea at first glance. However, could this idea be part of the problem? Maybe giving people free money for college isn't the best idea. There are four ways to spend money: 1) You spend your own money on yourself 2) You spend someone else's money on yourself 3) You spend your money on someone else 4) You spend someone else's money on someone else When you spend your own money on yourself, you are very selective with how that money is spent. Not only do you gain from what you buy, you also lose money you could use to buy other things. The other three situations are ones in which being selective isn't as important to the spender. Why does this matter? When people pay for college themselves, we are in situation 1; they have an incentive to choose a college they can afford while still being a great place to learn. When a student gets free money proportional to tuition, they can choose a school that charges ridiculously high rates for tuition. (Student loans are a middle ground. They are still spending money on themselves, but people the age of college students tend to be more frivolous with loans than money they earned, so they are still less interested in the price.) The more students that get free money for college, the higher the cost of college becomes, because the equilibrium price of college gets distorted. If all student aid disappeared tomorrow, then certainly the cost of college would decrease. If colleges get more money, then where does it go? Certainly not directly to education. It goes to fancy buildings to impress donors, and supporting the ultimate cash cow: government research grants. It goes to inflating the administrative staffs and inflating the salaries of the highest ranked members of that staff. If it was possible to pay for college on minimum wage, I wonder why we ever changed the system.

bequanna 13y ago
> It goes to inflating the administrative staffs and inflating the salaries of the highest ranked members of that staff. This. Bureaucratic bloat, no accountability and terrible efficiency. Many Universities are the largest employers in their state. Do our Universities exist to be Research and Educational institutions, or to employ armies of admin workers that push papers?

lnanek2 13y ago

I know he is just crunching numbers for unrelated jobs and unrelated colleges and making a conclusion based on that and no real knowledge, but I know tons of people who worked through college. A lot of them were work study program people, although on the east coast. If you Google the school he talks about, though, you can see they offer a similar program where the college pays half the student's salary: https://finaid.msu.edu/work.asp https://finaid.msu.edu/work.asp So a work study student only costs the employer half as much, and would generally be assumed to be earning a full pay check for working half the time and studying half the time. So it seems very doable. Generally a student with such low income isn't going to be paying full price anyway, so his other number is off too.

chrisbennet 13y ago

Is college important to us as a society? Assuming it (and other forms of further education) are, might we be better off funding state schools to the point that they have an affordable tuition? The upshot of this would be an cost competitive alternative to private schools. The looming debt these students take on now is not going to go away and will remain a drag on their forward progress for decades. Perhaps the collective interest being spent on all these loans might be better spent on actual education.

wmgries 13y ago

There are good arguments to be had about why college is so expensive and exactly how much federal and local money should go to education. It's simply untrue that it's impossible to pay your own way through college - I just did it for the last two and a half of my education. Of course I was making more than minimum wage, but for all but a semester I wasn't making radically above minimum wage (my last summer I worked at a top tech company). I chose to major in an in demand field that I was good at, worked a lot instead of drinking or playing video games, and went to an affordable in state school. Not everybody can make it through college without loans, but if everybody put the same effort into their job and education I did, it should be a worthwhile investment to carry a bit of debt.

wambotron 13y ago

Isn't this just basic supply and demand? There are more students trying to go to university now than there were in the 70s. It's basically become the next version of high school socially (and, sadly, also academically in many cases). What we need is a culture that respects people who want to just work at a factory, a big box store, a mall, whatever, without pushing them into doing something they don't want to do (school). Trade schools also help in this regard. I actually believe we need more push towards trades like plumbing, hvac, and carpentry rather than having more degrees in over-filled areas.

danpat 13y ago
The demand is artificially inflated by the ready availability of loan money. Many loans cannot legally be denied. This removes what otherwise would be a barrier to frivolous spending.
- theorique 13y ago
  And, on the flip side, the loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Therefore, there's a huge incentive on the lender's part to make such a loan. (Similar to NINJA loans and liar loans in the mortgage banking crisis of a few years ago.)
- Crake 13y ago
  Well, the most you can take out is $5,500 as an 18 year old. They're more than happy to legally deny you any other loans if you don't have the support of a rich family to cosign some private ones for you.
wpietri 13y ago
That would be true only if supply were fixed. Many more people want computers now than in the 70s, but prices are much lower.
- theorique 13y ago
  Supply at the top end is fixed. More and more people want to go to Harvard or Stanford, but it's not as though the supply of super-elite colleges has expanded. What seems to have expanded most is a means of getting a generic "college degree". Compared to that time, there are a lot more low-end places which will accept people with a checkbook (or federal student loan) and a pulse. Also, you can even acquire the knowledge associated with a degree, but without an actual diploma (MOOCs, online learning, etc).

AaronFriel 13y ago

The solution though, isn't to stop providing money to students for college. If you don't have Pell Grants, Stafford loans and the like, lower income bracket individuals would never be able to afford college. There is a simple fact: I could not pay my way through my Midwest university education without these things. I will graduate and be in debt, but I'll be better off having done it. Certainly the experience is worthwhile. The solution though, as some people propose, is not to end subsidies for lower income individuals. I see several people putting forth the argument that people are the most efficient at allocating money for themselves. That is not true except in an Ayn Rand novel. If people were so rational, everyone would go to college because the expected value of college still dwarfs the cost of college. Even for those individuals who would graduate with a significant amount of debt, it is far more worth it to have a degree than not. So, how would a society reduce the cost of college education without removing the supports that enable low income individuals to enroll? Instead of giving colleges free money, we need to re-orient our structure of providing support for students that need it so that the college has the right incentives. For example, tying the cost of college to graduate's earnings. Right now, a university gets money merely for pursuing higher levels of enrollment. There is no financial incentive for the university to involve students in student organizations, in leadership roles in their community, in politics or in networking. There is a tenuous link between those activities and pursuing alumni programs, but from what I've seen, alumni programs are a post-hoc solution to funding. A university sees an alumnus has done very well, and seeks to share in their wealth. Let's simplify: the cost of a college education is 3-5% of aggregate gross income for the rest of your life. People who go on to be tremendously successful will benefit their university, and the university will have an incentive to churn out more tremendously successful people. This tax could be enforced by the IRS, automatically deducted in most cases, and manually reported elsewhere. Now no one has to worry about the stress of student loans, and universities have every incentive to provide the highest quality education possible to maximize the value of their students. No more flooding the rosters of the university with under- and unqualified adjuncts in order to support higher enrollment numbers at lower costs to pad the pockets of administration. No more cutting student involvement to pad the athletics program.

eigenvector 13y ago
> If people were so rational, everyone would go to college because the expected value of college still dwarfs the cost of college. No, the expected value of a college degree is a result of a labour supply/demand curve and it wouldn't remain the same if you drastically shifted the supply curve. If everyone went to college, the additional earning power of a college graduate relative to the mean would be zero.

briantakita 13y ago

It seems like there are needed alternatives to & reforms in secondary education. The secondary education industry needs to remove the fluff and drive more value & relevancy to it's customers. The premise must be shifted toward students being able to choose their educational path. General requirements are expensive and a waste of money for students. Learning is a lifelong process. Students need to become self-motivated to educate themselves, instead of depending on a curriculum defined by authorities. General requirements are coercive because the student does not choose to learn these subjects. This means the student will be less engaged. There needs to be more emphasis on cross-functional & student inspired collaboration. Examples are engineering students collaborate with artists to create something. History students collaborate with theater & film students to create historical movies. Encourage professors, grad students, and undergrad students to collaborate on active research & projects. Remove the notion that GPA intrinsically means anything other than someone is good at playing the school game. Make the goals more in line with life after college. A portfolio of interesting projects says more about someone than a GPA.

gmays 13y ago

I graduated college in California late 2005/early 2006 (winter semester). My whole degree cost somewhere around $5,000 to $6,000. We didn't have much money, so I lived at home for the duration, went to a junior/community college for 1 year, then transferred to a local state college for another 18 months to graduate in a total of about 2.5 years. During that time I only took one summer off to work full-time. During the school year I didn't work much because the way the school counted credits I could take as many courses as I wanted at the fixed full-time student rate as long as I 1) received approval from the professors and 2) maintained a certain GPA. So I'd just load up on a ridiculous number of classes and spend my days and nights in the library. The girl I was dating lived across the street from the school, so I'd just spend most weeknights with her to save the commute. Even though the cost of my college education was low by any measure, we (my family) could still barely afford it and I almost had to drop out. I distinctly remember the conversation where my mom told me that she may not be able to afford to keep sending me to school. You'd think being a mix of Black, Mexican and Native American and being on the honor roll every year I'd have had a scholarship of some sort, but nope. Anyway, last year I was back home visiting family and spoke to a buddy's girlfriend about her educational plans since she was going to the same community college I went to. The cost per credit hour is now about 3X what I paid just 8 years ago! WTF!? I'm not sure how much the fees have increased at the 4-year state school, but I can only imagine. I was completely blown away. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had no idea education prices had increased so much, especially at community colleges.

FG_Regulus 13y ago
Wow - my degree lands me a beautiful $8k every year (2 semesters). But it gets better. I thought about improving myself in high school by going into early college. A free AA degree and at the same time as my HS diploma? Hell yeah! They didn't tell me that almost none of the credits would apply to my degree because 4-year degrees have almost every single course planned - so I still have 4 years to go... Oh and the feds just made a law that says if you take to long your tuition doubles. So for about the last year of my college that's $16k instead. Oh yeah, and we forgot. This state school requires every single student to take 9 credit hours in the summer - where summers aren't covered by any federal loans. So that's a lovely $40k pile of debt on me by the time I graduate. EDIT: Oops, included living costs, not just tuition. Living cost is about $8k-$12k a year. So the real total of debt is $72k.

jonalmeida 13y ago

This is my biggest concern since I'm currently a third year at university. It's only by luck that that I'm in a field that pays above minimum wage and it currently in demand for interns. For others retrospect: I got an 8 month internship after my second year and saved up enough money to pay for my next semester and some savings. Following that semester, I took another 8 month internship with the same process. I'm now finishing my third year (so to speak) and I intend to get another 4 month internship so I can use my remaining savings for a last full year of tuition and spending. I can't encourage enough that more people should look for and apply for internships for this reason alone if no other. I hate the idea of being in debt and this seems like the only way to survive. EDIT: Grammar

spullara 13y ago

I think it is pretty clearly the fault of student loans, roughly akin to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Home prices went up because anyone could get a loan to buy them even if they couldn't afford them.

blueblob 13y ago

Why do you need to work your way through college? Get a loan, Take more credit-hours per term, and pick a field that will give you a greater pay increase and your work will be worth a lot more (per hour) when you graduate. I understand this is an oversimplification because some people can't get loans/grants.

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fiatmoney 13y ago

The idea of consumption smoothing & college as a human capital investment (particularly in an arena with outsized rewards at the top end, which is now most areas with decent payoffs) imply that to the extent you don't absolutely have to, you shouldn't work through college. Other than perhaps connection-building internships during the summer, but those aren't really about the money.

bane 13y ago

On the flip side, if you have a degree, this means fewer people can afford it and your degree becomes all the more valuable over time. I've had a similar, but different thing happen as the state school I went to has shot up in the arbitrary US News and World Reports college rankings list over the last 20 years. It enabled them to finance a bunch of new construction (research buildings, classrooms, specialized degree satellite campuses), all new dorms, etc. What used to be basically a small commuter school that happened to offer university (Masters and Doctorates) degrees has turned into the largest university in the the State. The prestige it's offered my resume has gotten me endless recruitment offers and I ended up just taking it off my facebook profile I was getting contacted by too many people I didn't know wanting to form various alumni networks. At any rate, rising tuition, etc. just means that what I already received is becoming a more valuable investment. I like that. But I also feel empathy towards those going into college, knowing what a huge boost it was to my income earning potential. I worked my way through college, Pell Grants, a few loans. I was doing an 2x minimum wage internship my last 2 years that made it suck, but doable. I made enough after graduation that I paid off my loans in just a couple years. It was really tight though. I think it's still very possible to do at the state school level if you get the loans. But it's definitely getting harder. I couldn't imagine doing it at the private school or out of state level back then, and I can't imagine doing it today.

patrickg_zill 13y ago

I think this graphic might point towards some of the reason that college is so pricy: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png http://www.oftwominds.com/photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png Although it is somewhat cynical...

misterS 13y ago

> Most students take 12 credit hours per semester and only attend Fall and Spring semester. That’s 24 credit hours per year. 24 credits a year?! I am curious, is this really the norm in the US? At the universitiy I attended in mainland Europe you were excpected to do 30 credits each semester, so 60 CP a year.

TheCoelacanth 13y ago
US credits and ECTS credits don't mean the same thing. A US credit is roughly equivalent to 2 ECTS credits in terms of amount of time spent. Additionally, 12 credit hours is an unusually small amount of credits to take. That's usually the minimum amount to qualify as a full-time student. If you want to graduate in the normal amount of time you have to take more like 16 credit hours per semester.

geogra4 13y ago

The University of California charged NO TUITION until the 1970s. Think about that for a second. While we bicker and boast on here about bootstraps and how to pay off debt by living like a pauper we have to realize that we are straight up being stolen from. There is no reason why public universities should cost 10s of thousands of dollars for a 4 year degree. That's the whole reason they exist in the first place.

tedsanders 13y ago
Just because the price is zero doesn't mean the cost is zero. The main reason that college tuition has risen in America is that it become less and less subsidized by state governments. It's not straight up theft when that subsidy gets reduced.

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truelove 13y ago

Pay your way through college? Of course you can. You just have be able to to think outside the box. And if Belle Knox can do it, you can do it: - http://www.sbindependent.org/belle-knoxs-lust-education/ http://www.sbindependent.org/belle-knoxs-lust-education/ - http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/college-student-pays-ivy-league-tuition-smut-money/ http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/colleg...

davidf18 13y ago

In years past, states contributed a much larger proportion of public school budgets than they do today. Much of that money now goes towards Medicaid. Much of that Medicaid money does not go towards the poor but rather middle class who go to nursing homes. They spend down their assets and transfer them to their children. Hence, at least partially because of the middle class not buying nursing home insurance, the public universities are being deprived of their funding. Nowadays, City University of New York tuition reportedly is $3000 per semester. At least in some fields (eg Engineering) you can get a very good education there I am told.

HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
This is where I'm reminded of my disconnect: City College of NY was my "safety school." Back then it was $800/semester and I would have been commuting from our apartment in Brooklyn, so no meals/residency costs. This situation has gotten insane.
Crake 13y ago
I actually moved from the midwest to NYC for exactly that reason. I can't afford the in state public university in my home state, so I had to move here, as ridiculous as that sounds. Luckily, NYC is not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be. I pay about $200/month more in living expenses, but it's $10,000/year cheaper to go to school here and I get free health care through medicaid (important since I have a very painful health condition). I have no family support, so I have to make it work through, well, work and what little money I can get from federal financial aid. I'm really grateful CCNY still exists to provide me a path out of poverty. However, they're hiking tuition by $800/year for the next few years, so soon it'll be unaffordable, too...
MisterBastahrd 13y ago
Seems to me that states which are cutting education the most are doing it out of a slavish determination to balance their state budgets at all costs to score national political points. Here in Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has given away what would have been billions of tax dollars to private industry with little to show for it, cut income and corporate taxes, slashed medical spending for the poor and indigent, and raided medical funds which were supposed to last decades all in order to fuel his idiotic political agenda. Universities have had to close entire departments in order to make ends meet, and some regional schools have even contemplated the idea of becoming junior colleges. This is at a time when the state was largely shielded from the larger national economic downturn because of the economic boom that happened during the recovery from Katrina. He will go down as the worst governor in at least the last half century, which is quite a feat, given that Kathleen Blanco and Edwin Edwards occupied the governor's mansion for nearly half that time.

gedrap 13y ago

I am finishing my last year at Uni of Manchester (UK), and coming from a poor family in Eastern Europe. On one hand, it really sucks that I can't really afford to focus mainly on education because I have no plan B regarding money and have spent enough time being totally broke. It was a bit crushing experience when I knew I could do much better, if I could spend more time on it. But on other hand, that experience of working my up definitely helped me to grow up as a person. Which maybe is much more valuable, then the technical skills and the degree?

aspensmonster 13y ago

Actually, I think HN user mrxd hit the nail on the head here: >Here's another graph showing that the recent rise in tuition in Michigan is due to declining state education appropriations. >http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png ==================================== DING DING DING! Why did I have to scroll to the bottom to see this? As far as I'm concerned this is the major symptom that few people ever look at, much less ever try to think of a root cause for. The states, nearly all of which have to "balance the budget" every budget period, have to find ways to make cuts when economic downturns hit. Seeing as so much of what used to be the purview of the state has been captured by the private sector under the guise of "we can do it better, just let us handle it," the only major expense left to the state other than healthcare is education. When legislatures are faced with a choice of cutting Healthcare or Education, which one do you think is going to get the bigger axe? Which demographic does more voting? The not-of-age children and teenagers? The politically charged college students that paradoxically never seem to actually make it to the voting booth? Their parents perhaps? The same ones that love to hate on public education and talk about how terrible it is? Or... Is it the hundreds of thousands of individuals that rely on the state for medical assistance in one way or another? It's not a surprise at all that education gets the short end of the stick. It is the politically expedient answer in the face of economic downturns, when already-stretched state social programs are tasked further still. But the real clincher is this: the state legislatures know that the federal government will pick up the tab; it is ultimately the guarantor of the loans it issues. Better yet, since the liabilities were shifted onto the students individually, the state legislatures don't even look like they had to seek the help of the Big Government they're all so keen to hate! And best of all, thanks to the continued infusion of capital from the federal government, their state institutions actually have the outward appearance of growth: new buildings, renovations, fancy stadiums and gyms and elite professors. Of course, this is all on the backs of young students. And as a young 20-something, I'd like to know why the federal government agreed to balance states' budgets on the backs of its youths at all, much less without price controls. Just who is benefiting from such a laissez-faire attitude? It certainly doesn't feel like I am.

zymhan 13y ago
I had to scroll halfway down the page to find your comment, which still depressed me. As another young 20-something, I always wonder why people are so quick to use the "administrative bloat" or "federal loans" arguments when discussing rising tuition. The data seems to clearly support the relation between state funding and tuition costs, and yet less substantiated claims continue to rise to the top. Do I think college administrations could stand to lay off some people? Sure. Does that mean that those extra employees are the reason I'm saddled with $40k in loans? Hell no. If you don't want to pitch in to fund college educations, then fine, but don't act like the reason students are paying more isn't because of you.

ballard 13y ago

So a guy I know took his Yale scholarship, bought a boat and sails around the world and made the diff by working summers. Can't do that anymore.

morgante 13y ago

It's certainly a troubling trend, but it's not as troubling as it seems. One huge factor is the corresponding increase in financial aid, particularly at top institutions——if you came from a poor family several decades ago, you would have had to work your way through Harvard, now you will get full aid and can even get grants for summer activities. That's honestly a huge boon to meritocracy which we should not forget about. All these people pushing for the elimination of aid and a shift to market mechanisms need to seriously consider the impact that a zero-aid, market-based system would have: a return to a time when only the wealthy could attend great institutions and everyone else is relegated to community colleges and second-tier state universities. That's what market mechanisms are great at: matching products to people's ability to pay. I dearly hope we don't actually want that for our country. It undermines the very meritocracy we pride ourselves on——if we can't get an equal education, regardless of economic ability, then the rest of the market-based American economy is a sham of wealth perpetuation. --------- On a completely different note, I do actually think it is possible to work full-time during college. I've done so for the past year, in a fairly intense job capacity. I'll be graduating with enough money in the bank for the down payment on a small house.

FG_Regulus 13y ago
White kid from the lower middle-class. 4.7 high school with all honors and graduating with an AA. Had to start almsot completely over classes-wise because of the structure of the CS degree so what should have been 3 years is now 4 years at $16k a year. And $24k for the last year because of the new "if you go over X hours in your degree you pay double tuition" rule. So $72k of debt stepping out of that door. Almost all the jobs I've had offered are barely above MW, and the internships are the same or unpaid entirely (which is a scam, of course). So good for you - you can get your house. Meanwhile the other half of us cannot work off our debt even if we worked full time and put 100% of our income into paying it off.
- morgante 13y ago
  I'm also a white kid from the lower middle class. :) Maybe you're not pursuing the right jobs? With a CS degree, even internships should be paying WAY more than minimum wage.

tjmc 13y ago

This isn't true in Australia and many other countries where education costs are more reasonable. I'm in my last semester of a 4 year degree in mechanical engineering. The total tuition cost has been around USD$32K. I've worked the whole way through and will graduate without debt.

maheart 13y ago
Educational costs are however drastically increasing in Australia. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia#Commonwealth_supported_students http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aust... e.g. For CS (3 year course), pre-1997 you'd pay ~$9000. Today you'd pay ~21000. Adjusted for inflation, you'd still be paying roughly half in 1996, what you are paying today.

xerophtye 13y ago

Isn't this mostly US centric? The entire conversation in here is all about why colleges are expensive in US. What do the european HNers have to say for their colleges? I hear they are mostly free but the cost-of-living in europe is usally what weighs down foreign students