Comments on: Historical Trends in College Tuition

By: Yea for Mmmmmmmitch Daniels .. - Page 2 - City-Data Forum

Yea for Mmmmmmmitch Daniels .. - Page 2 - City-Data Forum — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:21:58 +0000

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:42:00 +0000

That many jobs are STARTING to require one. Many of the well paying jobs that didn’t require a degree in the 70s and 80s nowadays either don’t exist, or strongly prefer at least an associates. There’s a lot of rhetoric used by those aged about 40 plus, going on like “I have a great job that I got when I was 19 and don’t have a degree,” or “everyone I know got hired at the factories straight out of high school and made a comfortable middle class living.” But let me tell you what that sounds like to a 21 year old who’s about to graduate college and need to find a permanent job, or a 17 year old in their last year of high school: “that’s like, a cute story and everything, but what does that have to do with me?” Sure, jobs like hairstylist or mechanic will always be around and make good money, but other jobs that used to be lumped in with them (well paying, able to be qualified for in a year or less) are either obsolete or have moved overseas. The days where you can walk from your graduation into a ob at the auto factory are long gone, as are the days where you didn’t even have to have an 8th grade education to become a successful businessperson. As for sales, I’ve applied to be a shift manager at the local Urban Outfitters…..and while a degree isn’t practically required, I was laughed out of the store.

As for your second point, I think a lot more high school students would be ready for college upon their graduation if the school system didn’t give up on people starting in first grade based on race, class, gender,* or arbitrary performance on things that can easily be fixed in the first few years

*Gender is an odd exception here, because while girls seem to be encouraged to go to college, they seem to be encouraged for the wrong reasons, and not adequately prepared. Upon my own observations, I think certain sororities on my campus may be permanently stuck in 1952, in that 75% of their members are completely unprepared to do things like write papers and take tests, but don’t really care because college is just a place to hang around for 4 years and met boys in the business college or going to med school. This is also a class thing.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Can we, instead of ‘costs’ of college, see numbers approaching what people spend (out of pocket or out of deficit) for college?

In two years of (community) college, after tuition/fees/books/transportation/marginal food costs, but less the various types of money given to me by various agencies, I’m very close to dead even on money.

I find my experience hard to reconcile with the assertion that an ‘average year of college’ costs between $10k and $12k. It seems to me that groups which should not be grouped together in this calculation are being grouped together.

By: Melanie S.

Melanie S. — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:40:00 +0000

I don’t think 50% would be a “better” number or that the bottom half of every high school class would succeed at higher education–my comment was more about social stratification (everyone I am friends with has gone to university, so I overestimate the proportion in the population as a whole) than about the proportion of people who should go.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:53:00 +0000

I don’t think it’s surprising that 30% of people in the US get college degrees (are we talking about traditional college degrees?) — do that many jobs require one? Further education beyond high school, yes, whether someone is a hairstylist or mechanic, they usually need training and sometimes certification in their field. But many people have degrees and are overqualified for the jobs they have. Other careers, like sales, require a skillset and personal qualities that fit the work.

If you think 50% would be a “better” number, do you think the bottom half of every high school class would be able to succeed at university-level scholarship and graduate?

By: Bulla

Bulla — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:42:00 +0000

But the graph doesn’t show the cost of college as a % of, say, median household income. So it’s a bit pointless, as it doesn’t show whether the college costs burden people more or less..

By: Larrycharleswilson

Larrycharleswilson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:44:00 +0000

There will most likely be a continuing demand for plumbers, who are at least as important to the maintenance of modern society as an historian such as myself.

By: Melanie S.

Melanie S. — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:09:00 +0000

An interesting explanation of demographic trends there. I imagine dropout rates are different as well; I wonder if that's significant in relation to the self-selection out of the student pool in the first place. (I still find it very odd to think that only 30% of people get a college diploma these days--my parents are academics, as am I, so the norm among people I know is a grad degree or two per person. And that's also probably influenced by my always having lived in college-centered neighborhoods.) The data set that was used to make that graph is also lots of fun--I might have, uh, plotted public and private costs, percentage breakdowns of tuition, room and board for public and private institutions, and public institution costs as a fraction of private institution costs.