by Eric Guzy
Tuition for college is commonly described as being overpriced and far from payable on the salary of a student working part time at your local diner. However, how come it seemed that the prior generation, with an abundance of hard work and resilience were able to pay for school with a part time commitment?
In 1980 the minimum wage in our nation was $3.10. However, the cost for four years of university study (plus room and board) was $64,572. In 2015 Minimum wage was $7.25 on average and the average cost of tuition (plus room and board) is $175,684 for four years. The average work week hours logged per capita for a part time job is 30 hours. In 1980, if you worked thirty hours a week for your 8 semesters of college (15 weeks a semester) you would make about $11,160, which is about 17% of total tuition. However in 2015 with the same formula you would make $26,000. This is only about 14.5% percent of total tuition.
This difference may not seem drastic, but the rate of inflation is rising faster than employee salary can pace. With college becoming such an important nexus between today’s work force and the current generation many people have to choose between whether to suffer uneducated or to suffer constantly in the unremitting circle of getting an education to get paid, to pay off the education people took out loans to pay for because they felt they needed to make more money to change the world.
This alone is astonishing, but once you calculate for interest rates in today’s world it almost seems as though college should be formally recognized as a debt collection monopoly.
Data Sources:
http://www.alternet.org/education/how-did-college-education-become-so-ridiculously-expensive
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