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.
It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
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Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#12Also important to note that this is talking about the time to pay tuition alone. When you add living expenses, it's even more absurd.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#13That 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.
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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#14CS 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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#15Forget 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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#16I didn't realize this was ever possible outside community colleges.
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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#17We 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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#18That 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.
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.
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#19We 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 fo…
> 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?
Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
#20That 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.
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.