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It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

randalolson.com

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Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#71

Post by theorique »

danpat wrote: post #26
wambotron wrote: post #23

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 (sch…

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.

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.)

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#72

Post by glesica »

theorique wrote: post #58
jdreaver wrote: post #17

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 fo…

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. It's certainly not due to inflation in quality of education. More and more classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts rather than actual professors (who are mostly focused on their research programs in order to earn tenure). There are probably a few factors. - increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc…

- increasingly top-heavy administration (hey, let's add another $300K Assistant Deputy VP of Student Diversity, etc) providing a path for faculty to 'advance' in their careers

I'd like to point out that much of the administrative bloat has occurred because of new (bipartisan) laws forcing colleges to provide more services. There are services for veterans, services for the disabled, services for victims of crimes, oversight services for grants and such, etc. My girlfriend works for a university, and much of the administrative hiring they do is directly correlated to new requirements, laws, and administrative rules passed down from the federal or state governments.

So I think you're right, but don't place all the blame on the schools, just as much belongs to the political parties that like to use universities as a battlefield for whatever agenda they've got at the moment.

Edit: It is especially wrong to think that the faculty are driving administrative bloat when, in fact, the faculty are the biggest opponents (and literally stage rallies against it at some schools) because every dollar the university spends on an administrator is a dollar they don't spend paying a faculty member).

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#73

Post by [deleted] »

spikels wrote: post #59
jdreaver wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Most of those loans, however, are sponsored by the government and can't be defaulted on. No normal lender would give an 18 year old $50,000 to get a degree in anthropology, because they are unlikely to get it back. When the student is legally obligated to pay it back, then there is much little risk to the lender. If defaulting on student loans were possible, then the cost of college would decrease.

How would allowing defaults on government guaranteed student loans lower the cost of college? Cost would likely increase for most students. If loan interest rates were increased to compensate for the additional losses this would increase the cost for everyone getting a college loan who doesn't default. And since default has significant costs overall costs would also go up. Lastly this would reduce the incentive to ma…

[deleted]

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#74

Post by sgustard »

theorique wrote: post #58
jdreaver wrote: post #17

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 fo…

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. It's certainly not due to inflation in quality of education. More and more classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts rather than actual professors (who are mostly focused on their research programs in order to earn tenure). There are probably a few factors. - increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc…

> More and more classes are taught by graduate students

Those are the students who found a job to put themselves through school. See, it's a vicious cycle.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#75

Post by anigbrowl »

coin wrote: post #42
brudgers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, few students get much free money these days. Instead they get loans which charge hefty origination fees - like 5 points, and which are almost impossible to discharge via bankruptcy...despite the fact that many of them are backed by insurance and those which are not insured typically compound interest during the time the student is in school (typically on the full principle). The bloat has not been fueled b…

Just work a government job for 10 years and the remainder of your student loan paid for by the tax payers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Loan_Forgivenes...

Or a non-profit, which takes in a much wider range of jobs.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#76

Post by jonalmeida »

gohrt wrote: post #66
primitivesuave wrote: post #4

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.

$30k total debt, to enable your future career, is nothing to be complaining about. That's ~$50/month service.

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.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#77

Post by glenra »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #20
glenra wrote: post #11

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.

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.

I can't speak to other times and places but in silicon valley in the late 1980s I went to a temp agency and looked for unskilled work during the summer - I don't think I ever came across any jobs that paid as low as minimum wage. One summer I was a "shipping clerk" (meaning: guy who gets stuff out of a warehouse and puts it in boxes) at Syva - that paid over twice the minimum. Another summer I did data entry for the Accounts Receivable department at Dialog - that also paid much more than the minimum, and required only rudimentary typing skills. And yes, naturally once I was a declared CS major I could intern at IBM, but even before that I didn't see a need to work minimum wage.

(Even McDonald's was paying more than minimum in my area.)

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#79

Post by superuser2 »

theorique wrote: post #58
jdreaver wrote: post #17

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 fo…

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. It's certainly not due to inflation in quality of education. More and more classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts rather than actual professors (who are mostly focused on their research programs in order to earn tenure). There are probably a few factors. - increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc…

>increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc), as colleges compete with each other for students

This gets cited a lot, and sometimes people actually go to the trouble of citing the cost of a new facility at $x million. Is there evidence that these facilities actually raise the cost substantially per student per year? Often when I hear people getting offended about, say, a $15 million building, I run a back-of-the-napkin calculation and it's not even a drop in the bucket on a tuition bill when you consider that it's going to serve something like 40,000 people per year for more than 30 years.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#80

Post by glenra »

frostmatthew wrote: post #24
glenra wrote: post #11

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.

> 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 would only be useful if either a) we knew there were no students working minimum wage jobs or b) we were unconcerned with students unable to obtain higher paying jobs

I'm responding to the headline claim that it's allegedly impossible to work oneself through college. The corrected claim is that it's quite difficult to work through college on a minimum-wage job. But probably still possible for some if you're a CS major or an architectural major or any number of other majors. Basically, if your degree is one that promises to be lucrative or if you have any other valuable skills or expertise you can probably get SOME of the value of having a degree before you actually finish it by working in a degree-relevant field.
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