Yay – I’ll still be able to insist my kids pay their own way through school.

And for the record – I’m on the leading edge of gen y, I’m already worth more then my boomer parents, I have more choices, and more experiences and less stuff.

I will be responsible for my own retirement, I don’t have the pension they had. I have a career that is not stable, and will always be without the secure jobs they had. I have chosen to create my own security.

I also don’t place all that much value in a non-specific degree. i.e. political science (my own degree), history, etc. as opposed to nursing, engineering, doctor. If my son wants to go to school for an underwater basket weaving degree I certainly won’t contribute one penny.

And the starting point of my comment was, indeed, that the world has changed, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse, such that making comparisons is, as I put it earlier, a “futile discussion” because “relative hardship is impossible to judge.”

How you took offense at this is hard for me to understand, since you seem to agree with the basic point.

If you don’t want to believe the numbers, that’s fine. But please don’t make it sound like if younger people would just TRY HARDER they could be as successful as the boomers. The world has changed. Yes, in some ways for the better. But not in all ways.

I fail to see how making racial discrimination illegal, as a protection, even though it has value, figures into some unseen positive dollar amount paid in wages.

Few employers then offered benefits such as disability insurance protection, paid family leave, or were as generous as today’s employers on paid holidays, sick leave, vacation time. What health insurance was offered typically covered only hospitalization and dental or vision coverage was unheard of. There were no 401(k)s and defined benefit pension plans were stingy, often required many years of continuous work for a single employer before they would vest, and offered few or no early retirement options.

Moreover, employees today have protections barely even thought back then. Race discrimination had only recently been made illegal, and those laws were enforced in only the most egregious cases. Sex discrimination protections were even fewer; newspapers in the late 1960s still advertised jobs under “Help Wanted-Men” and “Help Wanted-Women” columns. Discrimination on the basis of disability was perfectly legal, with no duty to accommodate.

All those protections carry a price tag from the employer’s standpoint and presumably offer at least that much in value to employees, but are not reflected in “median starting salary” data.

In other words, assuming that these benefits and protections have value, today’s “median salaries” are not fairly stated in comparison to yesterday’s if we look only at the direct salary component.

My engineering degree cost about 26000$, of which I recieved 14000$ in scholarships. Then I worked 10 hours a week first year, and topping out at 30 hours/week in my fourth year. My starting salary was 54000$, double what I paid in tution. I guess I had it good, because grads certainly aren’t getting 189000$ to start these days…

I would never have been able to graduate debt free, and with a house downpayment in the bank with current tuition rates. As far as I know my old job lifeguarding job only pays 5$ (or 1/3) more per hour and tuition has almost quadrupled in four years – that’s insane! It’s getting worse.

I went to two separate public schools in the late 80′s & early 90′s. The first one had all that stuff and then some over 20 years ago so they aren’t spending money to add it. The second college had some of that stuff but not much and was not nearly as nice in almost all respects. Nothing has changed since then. The first school still has all the fancy stuff. The second school still still has peeling paint and out of date computers and no campus shuttle. Tuition has quadrupled at both schools.

I’m sure there are some schools adding some luxury items to entice some students and that has a cost. I don’t see it happening at the colleges I went to. I don’t think luxury spending has much of an impact on the overall college cost trends.

People sometimes blame technology spending for the increased tuition costs. They had computer labs on campuses 20 years ago too. But back then the computers cost $2500 each but today a computer is only $1000. Plus today its defacto standard that students have a laptop of their own so theres even less of a need for university computer labs. I mean think, why would universities be building giant computer labs when every student is carrying around a Macbook? Honestly I would expect that technology spending as % of college budgets has gone down in the past couple decades.

Government has been footing a lower portion of the total college bill at the university level. In 1984 to 2009 the state appropriations per student went up 3.6%. Spending / student went up 4.4%. The government money didn’t go up as fast as the spending per student. But that 4.4% spending per student is not as bad as the increases we see in tuition. The tuition rate in the same period went up 7.8%. However the tuition rate is only the full sticker price paid by people who get no aid. The actual tuition receipts went up 6.1%.

Here’s how it happens:

Lets say that State U gets 70% of its money from the state government and 30% from tuition. The school has 8000 students and a $100 million budget. For 2012 the state says they can’t spend any more cause times are tough and nobody wants a tax hike. But the university has 5% increases in its various costs. So they need another $5 million. They decide to make some cuts and only increase their budget by $3 million. However that $3 million increase is all coming from tuition. But half the students that go to State U are low income and getting lots of financial aid. So that $3 million really comes from the top half of students. That would be $750 more per student. Tuition was $7500 per year but now its going up to $8250 which is a 10% increase.

At the same time that federal government funded grants have not kept pace with the increases in tuition. In 1980 the federal government grants per student was about $1040 and average tuition at a 4 year school was $804. In 2010 the average grant aid was $6083 and tuition was $7600. Grant aid has not kept pace with tuition.

Tuition at private universities is a different matter. However tuition for private schools hasn’t gone up as fast. From example from 2000 to 2010 tuition went up 8% annually at public schools but at private schools it went up 5.4%.

Increased enrollment is also going to cause costs to go up. The # of students has grown faster than the population. There are about 50% more people on campus now compared to 30 years ago. Universities have had to add buildings and expand facilities to handle those students.

I still say the military is one of the best ways to pay for college. My oldest son was in the Marines for four years and is now in school full time, and my other two are planning to join once they graduate high school. Maybe one of them will decide to stay like I did, but if not he will have earned his college money by performing a service that most don’t want to do. Keyword “earned”, not borrowed. The terms of student loans are stated up front, complaining after the fact about the debt is wrong.

I’ve done a recruiting tour and with the exception of physical disqualifications most of the reasons mentioned for ineligibility are not show-stoppers, especially not physical fitness. (Why would anyone today not have a high school diploma or GED? Very few valid reasons…) If you apply yourself while in–and the military teaches this–you come out much more prepared for college. I’ve seen this multiple dozens of times with young troops I’ve mentored.

In addition, a high percentage of careers that require college also require that you live in a region where the cost of living is higher. In my rural area I doubt there are many engineering jobs around. One has to go to urban centers for those careers, where the cost of living might be twice as much as where I live. As a result the college-grad income statistics are misleadingly higher, as they may not actually result in a higher standard of living.

I know everything is not about how much material goods you have, but it is a better measure of the economic value of college. From what I see, I know a lot of people who didn’t go to college who appear to be better off than many college grads I know. Basically I see a strong overlap of the two groups when comparing, say, house size.

I just think the cost of going to college is now so great, you can no longer assume it will pay for itself. If you are going to take on huge debts, you have to be extremely sure that there are high-paying jobs in the field of your choice.

Especially if you have parent’s that will let you stay with them for awhile, many kids could be buying homes for cash in their twenties, at the same time their peers are graduating from college with a lifetime of debt. Talk about a head start in life and towards financial independence!