American Thinker:
In June of 1965, I graduated from high school in Knoxville, left my job as a bagboy at the A&P, and became a salesman at Sears, making $1.25 an hour.
I worked full-time that summer and part-time after starting at the University of Tennessee in late September.
I have enjoyed shocking students at U.T. in recent years by telling them it was $90 a quarter my freshman year — $270 for the school year.
Telling students about my tuition has allowed me to then tell them a simple but important lesson that they have seemingly never been taught: that costs simply explode on anything the federal government subsidizes.
This is because most of the pressures or incentives to hold down costs that are constantly present in the private sector are not there when the federal government takes over.
Over the last few weeks, I have heard both Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Maxine Waters crying crocodile tears about outstanding student loan debt being an astounding $1.5 trillion. What they do not seem to realize or would probably never admit is that it is their own federal government that has turned millions of young people into student loan slaves.
Big government always ends up helping a few at the top while hurting or giving a few crumbs to everyone else. The federal student loan program has been great for college and university administrators and some tenured professors but harmful to a great many students and their families.
Before the government and the higher education lobby started really pushing the student loan program mainly in the ’70s and ’80s, college tuition was cheap all over the country.
I once heard House majority leader Steny Hoyer say tuition at the University of Maryland was $87 a semester when he started there in the ’60s.
0bama built the tuition crisis just like he built the health insurance cost crisis.
A thorough accounting of the actual cost of the education and of where money is really going is needed.
Colleges rail against corporations but hypocritically they are the most corporate (and in most cases, socialist and closed-minded) of any institution. Tradeschool is the better alternative to the useless Leftist brainwashing institutions colleges have become.
$129/Quarter for a full load in 1969. Made my entire years expenses during the summer. Zero debt. But, back then, professors didn’t mind teaching undergraduates and land grant colleges weren’t yet giant money rackets.
Back then, tuition didn’t ultimately finance the democrat party, and useful degrees were offered instead of colleges being in the businus of financing corrupt leftist propagandists.
How we let this happen is shameful. Ultimately, we hired the Crying Boehners,so we have ourselves to blame.
I believe there are two sides at fault for student loan debt.
Certainly, having the Federal Government involved is the greatest problem, but secondarily, there is a great deal of fault to be attributed to parents of students allowing them to go to school for worthless subjects.
I told my boys that if they chose any major that ended in the word “studies” they were on their own. If they (or anyone else) are interested in a subject, read about that on your own time. Use the college time to get educated on something that can make you useful to a company or yourself to make a living (money).
College students should be encouraged and instructed by their parents that their schooling is to be used to get a career job after graduation. Also, the degree path can be varied and interesting, but degrees that will work into careers can be attained at State level schools for way less money and be just as useful.
The result in the case of my children and many others like them is that they have useful degrees and paid all of their loan debt off within a few months of graduation.
Also, you could get a nice 5-finger bag of Gold Bud for $35.
True story.
Colombian was $12.50 a lid.
And have to compress it so you could fold the flap on the baggie over. 16 oz. Glass bottle soda to combat cottonmouth 25¢.
NOW HEAR THIS YOUNG PEOPLE !!!
looks like giant offshore wind generators
capable of producing 17,000,000 watts of juice
are going up in the northeast.[whether we like
it or not}.They require constant maintenance.
Got to have electrical,electronics,hydraulics,
pneumatic and computer/network skills.Great op
for a good job working mostly outside like
radioationman did for 45 years.
Want to shock a college student? Tell ze/zir they’ll be no jobs available in that Gender Studies field. But that rainbow 🌈 certificate will look fabulous on your wall in the house you cannot afford.
A friend’s son is very bright, graduates high school this spring. He has been offered free academic scholarship by several colleges. But also invited by Harvard & Columbia to apply to attend school, but pay his own full tuition.
He wasn’t accepted by Harvard, but was accepted by Columbia.
I told his father he should tell his son the same thing my wife’s orthopedic surgeon says his father told him when he told his parents that he has decided to go to college after all.
His father said, ” That’s great son. It’s just what your mother and hoped you would do. Even after you said you didn’t want to further your education. I only have one question for you. How are you going to pay for it?”
[ he claims his parents never paid a dime helping him with college or med school]
Do ‘students’ actually WORK when during their college years anymore?? I have no idea just asking…
CCNY grad here and carpenter apprenticed whenever school was not in session, that was seven years in the making taking a little credits to be full time.
I think tuition per semester was under $2000 at THAT time…paid my own way, not my mommy and daddy…by WORKING.
University of Dayton Fall 1966 Tuition AND room and board >>>>>> $871!!! No BS had other expenses but………..
“looks like giant offshore wind generators
capable of producing 17,000,000 watts of juice
are going up in the northeast”
Has any study been done on how this affects climate?
They literally rob the wind of power. How can it not make things different downwind?
Same with wave robbing generators – how dare they rob the waves of energy. SOMETHING will be different down-wave because of it.
Where are the EPA studies?
Nothing is consequence free.
At least building a hydro-electric dam has the consequences of a new lake with all the extra benefits they bring – including a life sustaining water supply to hold and tap.
Off topic
Fastest five minutes on earth are the ones after pushing “post comment”.
Wait, misspelled that. Oh no, that doesn’t read right. Dang, forgot the comma…
Dadof4, perfectionists agree!
hahahha. It’s a curse, Claudia. We know we could have always done it better even if we really couldn’t have.
I’m thinking you graded essays because you were doing it anyway when you read things. Might as well get paid for it. 🙂
^^That’s right!
HOW TO GET SUCKERS TO VOTE FOR YOU
1. Create a crisis.
2. Allow people to suffer under that crisis.
3. Promise to fix the crisis you created.
I get stuck on commas…one of the hardest things to place and one of the easiest things to see as a mistake…
Sucks.
Just happens that I have a bag of commas I’ll let go cheap.
Some exclamation marks, too.
All manner of periods, semi-colons, colons, parentheses, question marks, and some other assortment of punctuation.
I think there’s even some mexican, french, and german stuff in there, too.
University of Houston-Fall 1977
Tuition-$50
Student Services fee $30
Building Use Fee-$90
$170 Total