
It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays - frostmatthew
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/03/22/its-impossible-to-work-your-way-through-college-nowadays/
======
jdreaver
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.

~~~
theorique
_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), as colleges compete with each other for students

\- 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

\- federally subsidized student loans make it less painful for colleges to
increase tuition than if students had to borrow independently or pay out of
pocket (this is especially egregious in for-profit education, where getting
that federal money is key ... gotta get those marks, er, students enrolled so
you get paid!)

Essentially, it's a racket where everyone has an incentive for the price to
keep rising - except for the students and their families, and perhaps the
government, who's underwriting this entire disastrous bubble.

~~~
glesica
_\- 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).

~~~
RyanZAG
" When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald
the end of the republic. "

~~~
Fomite
The vast majority of people have no aspiration towards being an academic
administrator, and academic administrators aren't exactly a powerful voting
block.

~~~
smm2000
But disabled veterans are a voting block and they vote themselves extra
services on campus and those services come with administrator. Repeat this
process with every disadvantaged group and you have tremendous bloat.

~~~
Nrsolis
You could make the argument that disabled veterans are the MOST important
voting block and with good reason.

Please refrain from reducing veterans to a political action committee. They
deserve much more than they currently get under our system. Try and get
through the red tape at the VA and then tell me how you feel about the outsize
effect that the veterans are having on the benefits debate.

~~~
ludston
Is it so unreasonable to believe that non-conscripted veterans deserve exactly
the same financial status as their equivalent non-veteran counterparts?
(Disabled or otherwise). This argument comes from anti-nationalist, pro-
equality-of-opportunity values.

~~~
Nrsolis
Yes. I believe it's WHOLLY unreasonable.

Veterans who go to war come back bearing terrible scars. They are routinely
subjected to horrific conditions that would make you cringe. They are asked to
do terrible things to terrible people and still maintain a standard of
professional conduct that civilians cannot maintain.

SO I _do_ believe it's unreasonable to treat war veterans, who volunteered to
sacrifice themselves and their lives to defend our way of life, just like any
other citizen who needs some governmental support.

Veterans who have no obligation to serve but do so anyway deserve our utmost
respect and admiration. And on the list of people who contribute to the
safety, security, and greatness of this country, they are at the very top.

------
glenra
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.

~~~
jiggy2011
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.

~~~
glenra
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.)

~~~
jisaacstone
Yes one problem with minimum wage is that it is fixed across the country even
though cost of living disparities are huge. The high cost of living in silicon
valley pushes up wages even at the lower end, whereas in some rural areas it
might even seem a bit high

For example in my hometown it is still possible to rent a flat with a friend
for less than $400/month meaning single people can survive on very little

------
macshaggy
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
_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.

------
wyager
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.

------
gmays
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
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.

------
aspensmonster
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
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.

~~~
sillysaurus3
If all you're paying is $40k in loans for your entire higher education, then
you got a pretty good deal in today's economy.

 _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._

The graph [http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png](http://i.imgur.com/5gYHQK5.png)
shows that from 2001 to 2012, the revenue per full time student went up by 50%
(courses became more expensive), while the state's contribution was reduced by
50% (state is paying less money toward education). So it seems like the data
is suggesting that the rising cost of education may be correlated with the
state's reduced funding towards education compared to previous years. If so,
then the reason students are paying more isn't because of the individual
voters or the population in general, but because the way the administrations
are allocating the budget.

It seems like the money has to come from somewhere, and politicians are
choosing to take it away from education, which causes students to be saddled
with ever-higher loans. The reason for that is because it's politically a
pretty safe maneuver, because there are much fewer students proportional to
the total population, which means politicians will lose proportionally less
votes than if they tried to pull the money from something else like
healthcare.

There doesn't seem much to be done except to make sure that you're voting and
letting their offices know that your vote is going to whomever can stop the
education cuts (if that's the topic which is most important to you).

~~~
nerfhammer
Here's more graphs with more states showing the same trend:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/a-truly-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/a-truly-
devastating-graph-on-state-higher-education-spending/274199/)

------
wambotron
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
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
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.)

------
jliptzin
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
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.

------
h1karu
I'll just leave this here: [http://www.geekation.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/Geekatio...](http://www.geekation.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/Geekation_NoamChomskyEducationDebt.jpg)

~~~
gohrt
Perhaps Noam Chomsky should stop drawing a salary from those tuition-paying
students.

~~~
alecdbrooks
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)

------
AaronFriel
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.

~~~
jdreaver
> 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.

I've never read an Ayn Rand novel, yet I still agree with that statement. I
guess if you call someone an Ayn Rand supporter, that is supposed to discredit
them? It's a pretty basic economic principle. If you take $10000 from your
bank account, you are less likely to impulsively purchase a new car than if
someone walked up to your house and gave you $10000. Seriously, it's super
simple, and has nothing to do with Ayn Rand.

> If people were so rational, everyone would go to college because the
> expected value of college still dwarfs the cost of college.

Many people get off fine without college. You are touting your preferences as
the only "rational" set of preferences. There is more to life than the
"expected value of college."

~~~
dnautics
I thought the idea that people were better at allocating money from themselves
is more like:

are you better off if I give you $1k no string attached or $1k specifying down
to the cent how you are to use it?

Generally speaking people know what their needs are and how to balance them
more than complete strangers or even, often, friends. Yes, people have
weaknesses, but to try to rule over their weaknesses is highly paternalistic
and demeaning. Moreover because of the fungibility of money, in the end often
the person will find a way to spend an equivalent batch of the same money in
the way they would have anyways.

~~~
jdreaver
> $1k specifying down to the cent how you are to use it

I would classify that as someone else spending money on you, with the
superficial detail that the money _happened_ to pass through your bank
account.

~~~
Klinky
Not exactly. Food stamps can only be spent on food, but you can determine what
food you buy. Financial Aid must have tuition(and often books) deducted before
the remainder is deposited into your account. Your company may pay for your
hotel room and meal, but only a room at a 3-star hotel or lower and a $20 meal
at a casual dining establishment.

It's not as black and white as you guys put it. Strings can exist, but how
much they control you can vary greatly.

~~~
jdreaver
I never said it was black and white. I thought that was the intent of the
person I replied to when they said "down to the cent."

I agree with you that it isn't black and white. (This is simply a semantic
argument.)

~~~
Klinky
I agree his statement appeared to be making a black and white argument. Your
reply seemed to be further defining the concept behind his statement. Perhaps
you were redefining it and I misinterpreted it.

------
davidf18
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.

~~~
Crake
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...

------
mrxd
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
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.

------
geogra4
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
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.

------
lnanek2
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.

------
jonalmeida
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

------
TreyS
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.

------
morgante
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
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
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.

------
bane
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.

------
briantakita
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.

------
wmgries
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.

------
tjmc
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
Educational costs are however drastically increasing in Australia.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aust...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia#Commonwealth_supported_students)

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.

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

~~~
dalke
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.

------
rverghes
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.

~~~
ZenoArrow
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
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
> 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)?

~~~
dalke
My point is there's a bunch of non-hackers which also spend a good amount of
time helping others to learn. There are quilting clubs, and hiking clubs, and
bee keeping clubs. Some of these organizations are over a century old. There
are science cafes, and book readings, public lectures, and temperance
organizations. I don't think hackers are notably more organized than other
skillsets.

For example, near where I live are two rowing clubs, both with their own
clubhouses and storage areas. I used to be a member of a tango organization,
with its own membership structure and bank account. It would organize events,
and bring in guest teachers. And so on. What is special about hackerspaces?

> What physical resources do you need to study such subjects?

Are you asking me because you don't have any experience with those programs,
nor have any friends who participated in them? If so, that would suggest a
large gap in your understanding of how colleges work.

A music program will have a large range of instruments, including large
instruments like a pipe organ and more exotic instruments like a gamelan (and
people who can build/maintain/tune the instruments), practice spaces, and
performance spaces. An art program will have equipment ranging from paints and
brushes to kilns to welding equipment and perhaps even a foundry. Some of
these require support staff. A theater program will have performance spaces,
costumes and props, plus again support people (eg, a licensed carpenter for
stage building, someone to oversee the electrics, etc.)

This is not something that every small town will have, which is why people go
somewhere else where those resources can be concentrated.

> Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals
> would be hard outside college?

Umm, yes? That's my point. In my town of 70,000 people, there probably aren't
enough like-minded individuals interested in, say, early medieval music.
Certainly not enough to have the instruments on-hand. While "[t]he Early Music
Institute at the Jacobs School of Music [at Indiana University] provides a
comprehensive program in the study of historical performance on original
instruments of music before ca.1800." (See
[http://www.music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/early-
musi...](http://www.music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/early-music/) ,
which also points out that commuting faculty and students "makes it difficult
to offer such a well-rounded educational experience and to have major
ensembles of such caliber".)

Or take the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, which has "theatrical
spaces outfitted with state-of-the-art intelligent lighting systems to
animation studios equipped with the latest 3D computer graphics software." How
does one get access to that sort of equipment, and put on a play which uses
it, in a hackerspace model?

> why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange
> in a more straightforward way

You've changed the topic. You originally said "Colleges offer five things
(from an academic point of view)", while I said that physical access to peers
is a sixth.

Physical peer proximity, in the hackerspace model, is hard to arrange for many
subjects. I studied physics. There are some 5,000-6,000 physics graduates each
year. (See
[http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201112/backpage.cfm](http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201112/backpage.cfm)
and [http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-
extr...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-extreme-
deficit-of-physics-undergraduates-aps-april-2008) ).

How does one establish a "physics space" when there are so few others in one's
immediate neighborhood who are interested in learning particle physics? This
seems like a prime reason to concentrate physics studies in one geographic
area, and have people move there to study and to teach. In other words,
college. Isn't that more straightforward than what you propose? (If not, how
would your model be more effective than what we have now?)

I feel when you said "I'm sure that makes learning more fun" that you didn't
get the point. This wasn't for fun, this was peer education. A few years ago a
friend told me "I don't think I could have graduated without your help." And I
know myself well enough to know that I do better with physical proximity than
telepresence. There are _educational_ benefits of learning with peers.

Focusing now on "why pay huge sums of money for that privilege".

That's also a different topic, and you didn't bring it up earlier. I agree
with you - college should not cost huge sums of money. I think higher
education is a social good and should be supported by the state, either free
or highly subsidized. Where I disagree with you is the idea that hackerspaces
provide a more straightforward way than what we have now, which includes
geographically co-located studies, and colleges with a strong distance
learning component like the Open University in the UK.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> You've changed the topic. You originally said "Colleges offer five things
> (from an academic point of view)", while I said that physical access to
> peers is a sixth.

I didn't change the topic. The reason I mentioned the five factors I believe
colleges contribute was in order to explore how they could be found without
the financial burdens that college can bring. I mentioned them in order to
find how colleges could best be disrupted from their position as gatekeepers
to knowledge.

> How does one establish a "physics space" when there are so few others in
> one's immediate neighborhood who are interested in learning particle
> physics?

Let's take your town of 70,000 people as an example. How many people would you
guess that would be interested in learning about physics? Would you say less
than 20? More than 5? How many people would you envision is required for a
decent physics meetup group?

~~~
dalke
And I assert that geographical proximity to peers is a sixth contribution.

The change in topic was when you said "pay huge sums of money" \- that's a
negative to colleges, and then the question becomes a cost benefit analysis.
Previous you were mostly focused on the benefits of college, which is all that
I addressed. Hence "change of topic." (Perhaps I should have said "widening of
topic"?)

I take it by the absence of a response that you are convinced that arts
programs can require more than what a hackerspace-style organization can
provide?

> How many people would you guess that would be interested in learning about
> physics?

"Learning about physics" is uselessly broad. Classical mechanics,
electricity&magnetism, thermodynamics, particle physics, astrophysics, and
solid state physics are very different aspects of physics. A meetup can't be
"learning about physics" but "learning about a specific topic in physics", and
likely even "and at the same level of understanding", since an introductory
quantum mechanics student likely won't make heads or tails of Cohen-Tannoudji
or Sakurai.

(For that matter, my school didn't even have a solid state course for
undergraduates, while some other colleges do.)

Why didn't you work out the math yourself? Assuming 6,000 new B.S.s in physics
per year out of a US population of 317 million, times 70,000 students in the
city => 1.3 students at a senior level.

Obviously at least two are needed for a study group, and some people prefer to
work independently, giving a high likelihood that a small city cannot support
a decent peer-based physics meetup group. FWIW, our study group had about 5
physics majors, out of 15 in the graduating class.

To put it another way, I grew up in Miami. The Miami metropolitan area has a
density of 890 people/sq. mi. That's 1 physics student for each 60 square
miles. For two nearby students to meet requires a minimum average of 5 miles
of travel. More likely there's 30+ minutes of travel for _each_ hackspace-
style meeting with 5 people. While on campus, when most people live on or very
near to campus, the commute time is a lot smaller. Thus, moving to be close to
peers can increase the amount of time available for studying and practice.

You then added a new thesis to the mix, which is that "colleges are the
gatekeeper to knowledge."

They most certainly are not. Colleges are the gatekeeper to _certification_ in
some fields (as your #5 points out; and as a real-world example, a Master of
Library and Information Science is required for most professional librarian
positions).

But "gatekeeper to knowledge"? Nonsense! How did you get that idea? What does
it even mean? What knowledge is prohibited or withheld from those without a
college education? Are you sure you aren't just using that term as a scare
tactic?

So, ways to disrupt the expensive college education system of the US:

1) free or highly subsidized college education for anyone who wants it, in any
field whatsoever.

2) minimize the importance of a (semi) classical liberal arts education and
promote trade, craft, and technical colleges as the better route for
certification-based skills training.

3) subsidize adult continuing education for those who have done #2 and still
want a general liberal arts education. (A town of 70,000 people can easily
have a few people interested in a common sophomore level course every other
year.)

4) set up something like the Open University, that is, a state school/non-
profit which has distance learning for those who can't attend a physical
college for all classes, and with research/lab space for those courses which
need it.

Is that disruptive enough for you?

Like I said, I see education as a general social good, and not a simple
cost/benefit analysis for a single person's own career.

------
gedrap
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?

------
chrisbennet
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.

------
fiatmoney
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.

------
blueblob
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.

------
misterS
> 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
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.

------
xerophtye
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

------
patrickg_zill
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...

------
spullara
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.

------
ballard
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.

------
truelove
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/colleg...](http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/college-
student-pays-ivy-league-tuition-smut-money/)

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

~~~
ronnier
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
When did you do this?

~~~
WriteYourRep
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
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.

~~~
stefan_kendall3
My CS degree cost me about an hour a day in homework on bad days. I skipped
many classes, only took relevant coursework, and graduated in 3 years.

