From the report: "the average college student in 2023 has to work about 4x as many hours on minimum wage as a student 30 years ago to access the same education."

This chart is idiotic because if you're on minimum wage you will qualify for considerable financial aid. Also, some of these states offer free community college to everyone so there's options other than just the state university.

This comment is idiotic because you clearly doesn’t understand the minutiae of FAFSA. If you work minimum wage and live at home, your parent’s income is what qualifies you for financial aid, not yours.

Also, free community college can be limited to certain programs. Not everyone can get the degree or even start in a general direction of their desired career path for free. There’s a lot of red tape and this boils it down to person needing to work x amount of minimum wage to afford an average year of tuition.

So basically it only applies to people with rich parents who are dicks and won't help them pay? That seems like a pretty esoteric concern. Especially because those people could get loans and pay after they graduate and have a higher income.

So you can afford a year of tuition if you spend no money on anything else. Ignoring that university SHOULD be a full time job in itself.

Anyone else think if we have a mathematically provably impossible system we need to tear it down and figure something else out?...

Loans and cost of schooling is such a trap these days that being a plumber is more profitable long term than something like a doctor.

For profit education is a scam and so are the loans that support it. The fact that anyone would spout such garbage in support of it is kind of a weirdly fitting example of how little education the average person gets these days.

>The income limit for an automatic zero expected family contribution is $27,000.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/student-finance/fafsa-income-limits/

The extra amenities don't pay for themselves.

The college my dad went to was basically an oversized high school. Then my sister went to look at it a few years ago and now it's really nice. New dorms, new gym, new library and labs. New cafeteria.

Like 7x the price.

AKA: More than minimum wage.

That's nonsense. The average individual with a college degree earns over a million dollars more in their lifetime. The average student loans are only $30,000 and that's ignoring all the people with no loans at all. There is no better investment a person in this can make than their own education.

My university looks like a country club now. When I went there the dorms all looked like projects.

Yes, wages are so low in many places that a parent supporting a family on a single income falls below many means-tested thresholds.

$27k is $13 an hour, assuming 40 hour weeks 52 weeks a year with no days off. This is below minimum wage where I live.

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I didn't graduate that long ago and the school I went to is much nicer now then when I graduated.

Brand new athletic facility. A number of the old buildings were gutted and remodeled.

That's student dollars they are spending.

Well yeah, that's the whole point of having a means tested benefits program. If nobody qualified it would be pretty useless. But you can get subsidies up to an income of like $200,000.

Weird because it seems like you understand how these programs benefit low income people, but just two comments ago you said they were for the kids of rich people only.

No, this GRAPH is only for rich people. It's pointless

No, because if you have no household income you will qualify for 100% subsidies by the FAFSA.

I'm not sure this data is very meaningful. The ranking metric used is a "weighted" tuition based on how many students pay out of state vs in state tuition. This is not very useful as a student is either one or the other. Better off to show the hours based on both or just one than a weird average. It is more a map of states with higher or lower shares of in state students.

When you're gouging people, you can afford nice things.

That's a consequence of the problem, not the cause.

Or an example of competition in no way benefitting the consumer.

>Or an example of competition in no way benefitting the consumer.

They get nice shit when they study. That's definitely a benefit.

Seems like kids want nice shit more than they want cheap school. Otherwise most of these private schools wouldn't exist, everyone would go to Suny Binghamton for 4k/yr not Syracuse for $40k.

The consumer does not seem to be too concerned with cost during the selection process.

Where the fuck is 4k a year?

Yet my parents are in complete denial about statistics like this. “We’ll things weren’t easy for us either..” (owns house, cars, has pension/retirement fund, employee healthcare benefits, and on top of that could afford 2 kids).

Mmmmkay. You have a nice day.

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other costs where higher in the past though, housing , food, communication, transportation everything else was more expensive. Not saying things are not out of whack today but comparing only tuition is a misnomer. Norman Borlaug has said one of his motivators was nearly starving to death while going to college.

Finally! Michigan has finally overtaken ALL of the Great Lakes and even parts of Canada. We will continue our quest for absolute control of all the fresh water in the western hemisphere. Watch out, Wisconsin. You’re next.

Binghamton, NY apparently.

For reference, a standard full time job (8 hours/day, 40 hours/week, 260 work days/year) is 2080 hours/year.

Except there is no alternative. There are no cheap, no-frills schools that let the consumer choose an education without all the amenities.

There are, however, tons of Midwestern state schools that have absolutely garbage amenities but still cost $24k per year to attend.

You'd think you're going to the no-frills, affordable universities because the dorms are from the 70s and full of mold, the single cafeteria seats about 100-200 at a time, most of the desks are from the 1960s, and the carpet hasn't been replaced anywhere since the 1980s, but then the bill comes due and it's still 70+% what the best state schools charge.

Because they know students have no other options. And there is zero incentive for anyone to come along and "compete" by opening a cheaper school, an endeavor that would cost millions of dollars just to get off the ground. Who would spend millions just to charge less?

What is the capitalist answer to this?

The specific scenario modeled here should not play out very much. If your income is that low, the financial aid package will be more generous. The exception is for-profit schools that were established to fleece the poor out of all the money they have and all the money they are able to borrow on student loans.

Community college. Online school, or go to another country. A better accreditation system would help as currently the colleges themselves get to gate keep who can offer classes and how.

But there are affordable schools out there. Cuny Brooklyn is like 5k tuition for example.

In my opinion, the state median hourly wages would provide a more realistic picture due to the fact that, for example, many (16) states follow the federal minimum wage requirement of $7.25, but only 1.25% of the US population actually makes the federal minimum, hence the data can become significantly skewed towards the minority of the population within those states rather than the average or majority of college students the data is depicting.

To make a quick illustration of my point, take Wyoming, for instance:

Wyoming's state minimum wage is $7.25, however, the median annual income for a Wyomingyte is $33,031, or $14.7 an hour. Using your own methodology then this would result in a halving of the number of hours needed for the average college student to pay for their college tuition and fees unless all of Wyoming's college students someone ended up falling inside the percentage (1.9%, according to Statista) of workers within the state that's meeting the state's minimum, which seems unlikely.

Please don't take this as some sort of comment on the cost or work required to pay for tuition nowadays; I'm in agreement with everyone else that It's way too expensive. I just feel that the output from the data used is not truly representative of the "average."

I think you're wrong.

Last time I checked, the cost of living has gone up quite a bit, compared to minimum wage.

Okay, boomer.

Okay, boomer.

Or that a lot of states have the federal minimum wage, but like 5% or even less people earn that.

Found the stat on BLS:

> In 2020, 73.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.5 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 247,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 865,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.1 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.5 percent of all hourly paid workers.

North Carolina data from 2015 only because I knew it was out there:

> Regional Commissioner Janet S. Rankin noted that the 122,000 workers earning the federal minimum wage or less made up 5.1 percent of all hourly paid workers in the state. Nationwide, those earning the federal minimum or less accounted for 3.3 percent of the hourly paid workforce. (See table 1. The North Carolina minimum wage is equal to the prevailing federal minimum wage.)

Why would you create a meaningless map based on min wage instead of doing this based on the mean wage of students? My niece just got her first job at 17. In the middle of nowhere WI and is getting 15 an hour.

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Sorry you are so out of touch with reality.

At least you'll have all the nurses and school teachers -- who were too busy studying to party, while they attended community colleges -- to take care of you in your old age, and teach your grandchildren economics and history (which you must have slept through).

[deleted]

cite your data

In my school they had a mandatory food charge of 2000 for the first year which could only be used on campus stores, most of which only sold junk food marked up by on average 4-6 times the original price. Not to mention the wildly overpriced dorms that are also mandatory and the classes themselves being expensive. Or the limited parking that they charge hundreds of dollars for and refuse to use the money to build more reliable parking so they can ticket people. This shit is absolutely predatory at best and they are entirely aware of it.

In my school they had a mandatory food charge of 2000 for the first year which could only be used on campus stores, most of which only sold junk food marked up by on average 4-6 times the original price. Not to mention the wildly overpriced dorms that are also mandatory and the classes themselves being expensive. Or the limited parking that they charge hundreds of dollars for and refuse to use the money to build more reliable parking so they can ticket people. This shit is absolutely predatory at best and they are entirely aware of it.

I'm 43. If you think things were easy for me 25 years ago, you're a fool. I too, sat in an apartment I couldn't afford, with no power because the power company pulled the plug after 3 months of non payment. Ate Raman noodles and hot dogs for 3 years until I eventually stepped it up to cheese-dogs. Topping my car off with anti-freeze every day because I couldn't afford a new radiator, let alone a new car. No cell phone, no internet, no cable. Used a rusted coat hanger to get my local channels just so I could keep up on current events. I'm doing well now, but it wasn't easy for me either.

This generation really thinks they're the only ones who have ever had to deal with hardships as they negotiate the life of adulthood. My grandparents (growing up through the depression) would be rolling over in their grave if they heard the nonsense you guys spew.

You can't get a premed degree, an engineering degree, or an MBA from a community college.

Online colleges are sketchy, still expensive, lacking in even more amenities, and suffer from low credibility..

Traveling abroad costs money, and the way most developed nations subsidize universities to keep costs down without flooding them with students is by increasing the required to get in and stay in school, so you're asking Americans to spend thousands of dollars to move abroad and apply to foreign universities and pass much more rigorous entrance and pacekeeping exams after going through the declining American school system. That's also hardly viable for most people.

Instead, we can just use the same solution most other nations have worked all of the kinks and bugs out of: Subsidize higher education with tax dollars, regulate the prices universities may charge, and increase academic rigor at universities to ensure that nobody without the will and the aptitude to succeed enrolls.

That last part serves the dual purpose of revitalizing community colleges and trade schools as more students accept that 4-year universities aren't aligned with their goals instead of going just because it's the thing to do.

2-year degrees and trade schools are often treated like consolation prizes in America. As if only those whose lives haven't panned out would ever end up there because everyone with their shit together gets a bachelor's degree.

We can change that by emphasizing with entry testing that 4-year degrees are highly specialized and intended for those interested in more academic or design-based work; and that those without those goals can and should instead pursue 2-year programs. By making 4-year degrees more selective we can also discourage employers from scorning a 2-year degree that meets every requirement for the job role.

Again: These problems have proven solutions that have been employed for decades all over the developed world. America need not reinvent the wheel.

Those who go to school earn a sufficiently high wage premium that they do not require subsidization. End of story.

If they want a budget option they are available.

I see no reason to give future high earners tens of thousands of public dollars and have the public assume all the risk if they fail. Figure it out for yourself or don't go.

The problems have not been solved in other countries. They are just hiding in bloated government spending that benefits only high earners and shifts all the risk to the public. Hard pass.

You’re making a claim, cite yours too

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=76967

Even though these domestic flights appear not to have changed that much, international airfares have become much more affordable. According to Nomad Wallet, in 1970, a return flight between New York and London was retailed for $550. With inflation, that's around $5,350 in today's money. With low-cost airlines abound, tickets between New York and London can range from $300 to $1,000 in economy.

https://clickamericana.com/topics/science-technology/international-phone-calls-1965

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/09/20190930-sivak.html

You're using your individual experience to refute the difficulties which the entire current college age generation is facing, and you're stereotyping "this generation" based on a subset of its members who either don't see the point in trying to get a degree, or who don't have the skills/support/resources to get one.

This is a great way to stroke your own ego, but doesn't do much for resolving the problems we face as a society and a nation. Who are you to say what "this generation" thinks? This isn't about you.

>Those who go to school earn a sufficiently high wage premium that they do not require subsidization. End of story.

You destroyed your credibility in record time.

Stop vomiting up tired old talking points that don't address anything I said. You are unfathomably wrong on this, to the point that it's staggering.

Every single data point says the US is the one with a bloated, broken system that puts all the risk on the public and we're about to face a crisis over it.

No other developed country is struggling this badly or facing this much risk from higher education. For reasons I spoonfed to you but you chose to ignore.

Grow up. Pull your head out of the sand. Go study the topic before pushing your pre-canned Boomer rhetoric on others. End of story.

https://perc.tamu.edu/PERC-Blog/PERC-Blog/Inflation-and-Falling-Purchasing-Power-Wages-Aren%E2%80%99

Yeah, because domestic flights and international phone calls are major expenses for most US citizens.

By the way, your first link point to a chart which shows that "Total food budget share increased from 9.4 percent of disposable income to 10.3 percent in 2021"

Oh, I forgot about the college educated. I'm glad millennials had an opportunity to go to college. Only 20% of Gen xers were able to get a four year degree compared to roughly 40% of millennials. We couldn't afford to get any higher learning, nor did we have the time because of the multiple jobs we were required to work just to afford staples this generation takes for granted. Most of them still can't.

It's not just my story. It's my entire generation's story. And it's also the story of boomers, before me. And the same story of the silent generation before them.

Each generation has had their own struggles that were unique to their generation. Millennials don't have it any harder, and it's getting kinda old.

When the millennials grow up and start having grandkids of their own, you'll see this pattern rinse and repeat. Those new kids will complain about the raw hand they've been dealt, and how hard it is to accomplish anything, and all the millennials will be rolling their eyes and trying to explain to them the same thing I'm explaining to you.

Dude two seconds on Google got me all this research that clearly states college degrees more than pay for themselves. All you could find was one shitty wiki article??

If you're struggling that's a reflection of you. Don't project your incompetence on society.

https://educationdata.org/college-degree-roi

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/college-pays-off/#:~:text=March%201%2C%202022&text=On%20average%2C%20recent%20college%20graduates,earn%20only%20%2430%2C000%20per%20year.

https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2022/data-on-display/education-pays.htm

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/the-college-payoff/#:~:text=A%20Bachelor's%20degree%20is%20worth,men%20at%20similar%20education%20levels.

this year, you're using one odd ball year 6 months, why?

and yet food is still 50% cheaper, what is your point?

Let Me Google That For You...

Sorry, I hastily pasted the wrong link. This one goes into some more depth:

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

Combine the above info, which shows that "housing , food, communication, transportation everything else" actually wasn't more less expensive with the following info (which is seven years old, but the trend hasn't changed), and you'll see that college tuition increases are far from offset by a lower cost of living:

https://archive.attn.com/stories/19/paying-college-1978-vs-paying-college-2014

Edit: a word

You can whattabout all day long. The big picture is that, overall, wages vs purchasing power hasn't increased.

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

That's the point: you "expect" the benefits of our civilized society without understanding or supporting what makes those benefits possible.

And old farts have been saying colleges are "state of the art technology infused booze cruise clubs" since the 1960s. It wasn't true then, and it is still just an egocentric lie.

did i ever claim it did? you're so angry that you make shit up in your head. How are you any different then the MAGA morons about masks?

it is a fact prices are less and we can look things like gasoline, although adjusted for inflation gas prices have stayed about the same cars are getting 50% more miles per gallon so fuel as a % of income is less. Almost all consumer goods are cheaper today then they were in the past (maybe) all, can you find something that is more expensive today? Also tuition has been rising at 6% per year on average since the 1960's, this isn't anything new, sorry you aren't that special.

Spending power is the combination of consumer prices and consumer income; it reflects what people can afford instead of simply looking at how much they earn or how much things cost.

College is much less affordable now than it has been in the past.

> other costs where higher in the past though, housing , food, communication, transportation everything else was more expensive.

You implied things were less affordable in the past, but when compared to typical wages in the past, that isn't true.

This is what you said "I think you're wrong.

Last time I checked, the cost of living has gone up quite a bit, compared to minimum wage."

This is factual inaccurate and has nothing to do with the cost of education.

"College is much less affordable now than it has been in the past."

this is also factual inaccurate and the % of people going to college proves this. In the US the number of kids who go to college has doubled since the 70's. You could say, the dumb fucks that go to a out of state school and get a degree in something that doesn't pay well and load themselves up with a ton of debt don't get their monies worth but school is certainly affordable if you do it wisely and the numbers prove it. Tuition is up but the cost of living is down and there are more opportunities then ever to get an education subsidized but I really think we need to go back to the "good old days" strip the schools bare, get rid of Pell grants and all lending and make people pay cash up front. Jam the "good old days" down the throats of everyone that thinks it was so awesome.

prove it,

The Real Minimum Wage Keeps Getting Smaller. Here’s Why

How grocery purchasing power has changed in the U.S.

For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades

I think you're wrong.

[deleted]

Huh? You'll have to explain what you mean, it doesn't make any sense.

It's so weird to do this with the sticker price of college, and to combine in- and out- of state. Sticker price the max you pay in tuition, and families where people are earning minimum wage usually get huge discounts on the price. The UC system in California says about 55% of students pay no tuition at all. The statement used as the title is not supported by this analysis.

I think there's good data out there on average cost of attending schools (tuition and living costs net of grants and student aid).