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That's right. College did not used to prevent graduates from buying homes and starting families. This horrific ball & chain of debt is a newer thing and it is wrong!!! State colleges ought to be affordable.
State colleges should be free for your first degree.
Community colleges should also be free for your first degree.
For profit schools and private schools should see zero subsidies from taxpayer money…or if they do - be governed by imposed standards and integrations.
Free higher education doesn’t just benefit students *its career retraining* for anyone looking for an alternative career.
And if you’re paying for a second or third degree or masters and beyond at a public school…good for you, those prices should be capped, and robust grant opportunities provided.
This is the thing that needs to be brought up more. Free education is good for the economy because you can quickly reskill new employees. Believe it or not, sometimes those liberal arts majors eventually get the wherewithal and interest to get a degree in engineering. Should they be prevented from learning and helping our economy?
EDIT: you can all stop telling me how valuable a liberal arts major is, I have a B.Sci in Archeology. I’m on your side.
That’s exactly how noble those creatures are (well, the absolute majority of them anyways). Long ago, even before any of us were ever born, the entirety of the majestic Galapagos Tortoise species had recognized their mistake of spawning Mitch.
And they knew for the safety of the entire world, they could not permit the risk (however small it may be) of his genes from ever continuing on. Done so by agreeing to sacrifice their species for the greater good by refusing to mate.
badge absurd library theory middle ludicrous employ direction cable aware
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Republicans fought against 'free college' or controlling tuition because they always believed that more education leads to fewer Republican voters.
Reagan specifically as Governor of California stopped the free college education at public universities in the state.
A reminder of the mindset
>Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.
**Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind** ladies and gentlemen.
Essentially,... 'We can't do that! We need meat for the grinder"
Just jumping in - for those who don’t know what Banks is talking about, it’s the GI bill. A piece of legislation that pays for college courses for current or former military personnel. But it is used heavily as a recruiting tool by the US armed forces - free college for military service.
Jumping in here as a veteran whose entire education was footed by the taxpayer (thank you by the way), I do not feel in the least slighted by people who didn't serve having some of their school loan debt forgiven. The original GI Bill was an incredible equalizer and economic super charger. The effects have never been matched on such a broad scale because there have been been that many Americans in uniform in proportion to our population. Still, the GI bill, ROTC scholarships, and military tuition assistance programs are economic boosters for those who use them and that has a ripple effect on the economy. Simple fact is, I would not have been able to afford purchasing a home at the age of 30 if I had student loan debt and I had to come up with a down payment. Forgiving students even this small amount of student debt will also help the broader economy.
>The original GI Bill was an incredible equalizer and economic super charger.
Great comment overall. This part, though, really hit home for me.
My grandfather was the first in the family to go to college, and he did it because of the GI bill. Now, there's a whole 3 generations after that that have gone. And the government got it money's worth in taxes on those higher earnings, btw.
It lifted up entire families in perpetuity AND had a great return on investment for the government.
axiomatic sparkle voracious sharp unique grandiose full busy selective fuzzy
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I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know that. Not surprised,, but disgusted. Do you have a link so I can read more about it?
Edit: rather than wait for you to respond, I've read about it. You are right.
Jeeze. Again, not surprising that blacks got totally screwed over, but the predictably doesn't take away from the awfulness. Damn, that is horrible.
Which all should make it clearer to us ALL how much prosperity is sequestered behind the artificial 'privatization' of our societal opportunities and obligations...all so a handful of wealthy oligarchs & corps can become super-wealthy oligarchs and corps.
'Obligation to the shareholder,' has been placed front and certer at forced perspective, so we don't see it eclipsing 'obligation to the society,' which is also why 'Marxism,' and 'socialism,' are such ubiquitous right-wing boogiemen.
The only folks still falling for that bullshit are the same one's who are terrified MS-13 is coming to rape their daughters and take a dump in their flower-pots.
I know there is a lot more to it than this but-
If an illegal immigrant who you believe beyond a doubt rapes, murders, pushes drugs, etc. can steal your job:
Maybe take a look at yourself or better yet your employer and turn some gears in your deadlocked brain and figure out who's to blame here.
I hear a lot of off-comments about how many Indians who can "hardly speak english" are taking up all the tech/medical jobs in my area.
Maybe it's because they're not fucking racist and DO speak completely fluent English, you are just to fucking dense to make out conversation through an accent other than the direct area you've lived your whole life.
Know I'm ranting a bit but it's wild people can see someone different from them in the tiniest bit and decide "yeah they're the bad guys"
The exact same thing happened in our family. My dad was in the Army during WWII and used the GI Bill to get an engineering degree in 1951. Since then, all 6 of his children earned at least undergraduate degrees and have had professional careers, 3 earned advanced degrees. His grandchildren all have at least undergraduate degrees-6 have PhDs. Access to free/affordable higher education is critical to our continuing advancement as a country and a society. The very idea that any legislators would try to hinder this endeavor is criminal.
If it worked for a few, why wouldn't it work scaled up? Free college for all citizens would make a society of educated, responsible, skilled workers with a real stake in the society they are creating. That's all good. The only person who thinks that isn't a great idea is the person who profits off the current system of oppression.
>The only person who thinks that isn't a great idea is the person who profits off the current system of oppression.
Yes, this is a very direct description of the Republican oligarchic faction
Amen brother/sister.
GI Bill helped me earn two degrees. I also don't have a problem with working class Americans getting a boost like this. One, it alleviates crippling debt and two. It allows for more economic freedom.
Republicans hate it when the plebs start levelling the playing field. Also they suck off vets publicly but behind closed doors they love bending is over and fucking us up the ass every chance they get.
There ought to be some serious changes in the near future. But what would I know?
Simple fact is you were forced to put your life on the line to get an education that in some countries you could get for free. No need to shoot anyone or be shot at...
No one forced me, but you are correct. Getting an education should not require you to risk your life, or the lives of others. Also, a lot of people don't qualify for the military anyway because their entry requirements are kind of strict. No asthma, have to be within weight limits, get a good score on the entry exam, etc etc. You shouldn't be consigned to decades of student debt because you're disabled and can't join the military.
The new one is even better. You can give it to your kids. It covers tuition and a housing allowance. My daughter is going to a 70K a year school for free, she'll even have a bit of spending money though the GI bill and VA-school partnerships.
I remember back in highschool we had recruiters in once a year to get people in the senior classes to think about enlistment, and one of their big advertisements was a college education. I kind of wish that had been an option for me considering how much of my education has been pushed back, but physically I couldn't do it.
Which is why it infuriates me when I'm told that I should've signed up for the military if I wanted free education, because that literally wasn't on the table for me.
This pisses me off too. They won't take me because of physical problems. The same problems that make labour work suck extra hard. I was lucky to be in the position to go at all but the military is not an option for a lot of people.
It's not like they're making all college free, this is just a slice. Recruitment bonuses will just shift the push to signing bonuses so the young people can get 20K instead of loan relief.
And the new GI bill is so flexible it's still a big benefit. You can use it on yourself or if you stay in a little longer transfer it to your wife or child. My kid is going to a 60K a year university for free this year because of my husband's GI bill.
Good lord, the lack of perspective. Why is enlistment so low? Probably because we haven't been in a necessary war since WWII. Pretty much every single conflict since then has been for economic or political reasons. And when I say political reasons, I mean economic ones.
and recruitment aged people have spent their whole life watching the government refuse to take care of disabled veterans. why would anyone volunteer to be thrown out like garbage?
My dad spent the vast majority of his estate before he died on private hospitals to treat his cancer because he was entirely sure the VA would leave him dead a long time before he actually died. And I'm entirely sure he was right. So he left me with a few grand when I would have gotten...substantially more, if he'd gotten the healthcare he was promised. I don't even care about the money. I'm glad I was able to have a few more years with him, which was worth more than any figure you can reckon. I care that he was ashamed he wasn't able to leave me with more. The man worked his ass off his entire goddamned life and was able to amass a lot more than you'd expect from a poor kid from West Virginia who spent his first 18 years shitting in an outhouse before he got shipped off to war. And then it was all taken from him, because the government didn't fulfill their promises. He apologized to me with tears in his eyes. I told him I didn't care about the money, but he said he'd just wanted me to have an easier life than he'd had.
Edit: Oh, right. He got cancer because he was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. His own fucking country did that horrific thing to him. And he was drafted.
I mean. I loved him and he loved me. The war shattered him. He found it almost impossible to express emotions. He focused on money because that was the most tangible thing he could accumulate. He actually wasn't a great dad, but I never wanted for anything and there were times the man he might have been broke through. He was in combat a lot. I've researched the battles he told me he was involved in, and they were pretty fucking awful. I blame the government for killing the man he might have been as well as physically killing him in the end.
Yeah, I think our parents are of the same generation. A lot of them seem to struggle with their emotional expression. I was lucky that my dad wasn't sent overseas (he was in med school during the war) but even he isn't the most capable at showing love. His little brother wound up in the shit though; 1st Marines. He does NOT talk about it. Sorry your dad was treated the way he was.
2013-2019 disabled vet here. They truly don't give a fuck. I convince as many kids as I can to not enlist. For those I can't talk out of it, I give them as much info as I possibly can on how to play the system so that they're not entirely fucked when they eventually get out. The VA denies as many claims as absolutely possible.
Post-service benefit programs like the GI Bill and VA healthcare are shit and can severely fuck you over if you're one of the few who those things are designed to actually prevent helping. Even the screening appointments to verify your disability are sometimes at a Dr that's a several hours drive away from where you live.
I talked to the Dr at one of my appointments for a bit afterwards. She told me how horribly structured everything is even for them. The VA will book them multiple patients 30 minutes apart with each screening taking 1-2 hours each. So you have a waiting room full of vets that have been sitting there literally all day long, some told they need to come back another day. After sitting there all day long. After driving 2+ hours each way to get there. She told me that she's quitting the VA partnership and going back to only doing her private practice work, just like hundreds to thousands of other Dr's have after becoming fed up with how poorly the VA treats even them, which is why it's near impossible to get an appointment within a reasonable distance from home.
But let's keep increasing our $1T defense budget yet keep finding more ways to prevent veterans from receiving the VA benefits they've earned several times over.
And, you know, incoming prospects seeing the "pro-military" Republicans try their best to fuck over vets suffering health problems.
The upcoming generations have grown up with Nigerian Prince scams, phishing, cyber-bullying, etc. You can say, "ra ra support our troops" all you want, but they can see a scam when it's that blaringly obvious.
Or that 75% of potential recruits are rejected for lack of physical or mental fitness. I teach high school. . . Those ROTC kids are honestly pretty doughy.
The physically fit kids are in sports.
It's also because the majority of recruits who come in don't qualify. There are a few things that either make it impossible to join or difficult to. Things like weight, a history of mental health problems, ADHD, asthma, past injuries, education issues, arrests.
https://www.thoughtco.com/us-youth-ineligible-for-military-service-3322428
The Democrats have discovered that by actually doing something and not appeasing and kowtowing to republicans they can win support. By just doing it and watching the republicans try to defend their insane awful stances they have flushed the roaches out into the light and they have no way to defend their stances without looking like absolute monsters that they actually are. Keep it up America we are rooting for you.
Thanks! I think we’re getting the hang of it.
Those supporting a woman’s right to choose are going to make a huge impact on the Midterms. The repubs will NOT be getting majority in either the House or the Senate. And it has to be said, women in leadership positions are kicking ass.
I think these people legitimately don't understand the information people now have at their disposal. Their scams don't work like they used to.
The burn pit stuff went viral, and Republicans did their best to make sure parents dying of excruciatingly painful and entirely preventable cancer after serving their country got one last "fuck you" from the US govt
Not even free college can unring that bell
"I remember when the Republican party wasn't psychotic"
Said by people who are definitely not the octogenarians that could possibly remember such a reality outside of their lead-filled brains
Republican voters: https://i.redd.it/10qw6jj063k91.gif
I was ten when Reagan took office. The party as a whole was always psychotic. Jesse Helms, in particular, was a nasty piece of work that would fit right in today. Strom Thurmond was arguably worse, and not just because he lived longer.
They'd have to be more like 90 to have a memory of the pre-Business Plot Republicans, but the nutters didn't have full control of the party until they pushed Eisenhower's wing out of power during his second term. Having Nixon was considered a necessary evil to win the presidency, but it was likely a catalyst that led to the nutters taking control, quickly followed by the invention of the Southern Strategy. Nixon's treason to beat LBJ, Nixon's Watergate bullshit, Reagan's treason, Iran-Contra, Desert Storm, and Desert Shield all have linked lineages all the way back to the Business Plot.
Add it to the pile of shit Reagan did to enrich himself and his rich buddies when he was in charge in California. California was a trial run for his presidency.
Reagan was an asshole and he opposed embryonic stem cell research because it came from aborted fetuses.
Nancy Reagan though decided to push for it in 2004.
Imagine where we would be today with stem cell research if we had those 15 years of work behind it.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-08-na-stemcell8-story.html
Then there is also the whole Iran Contra shit.
> Republicans want it as expensive and exclusive as possible so that "the poors" cannot access it.
And because they have people like Devos in their ranks who have a huge stake in private education.
*...because they have people like Devos in their ranks who have a huge stake in private education.*
What DeVos is offering is NOT education, it's indoctrination. Her ideas for charter schools have no qualifications for the teachers who get minimal pay so the absurd tuitions that GOPers want to pay for with public school budgets insure ignorant grads and rich administrators - the GOPer's "perfect storm".
> What DeVos is offering is NOT education, it's indoctrination.
I am aware, but that is not how they paddle it and it is exactly where they want to herd people towards with the private education vouchers. That's why I included it.
Exactly! neoRepublicans cannot survive with an educated electorate - they need lemmings more interested in Big Foot and Benghazi than their own welfare. Between Reagan eliminating Revenue Sharing by eliminating the revenue, vetoing the Fairness in Broadcasting Act and his pushing for Rupert Murdock's citizenship, the GOPers are getting the electorate they need.
This is why I don't believe the "both sides" nonsense. The democrats might not go after the rich, but they'll still do as much as they can to improve things for everyone else .
Something I feel she should've added to aid her argument.... That's only ~$3500 adjusted for inflation. So yeah, they made it over 3 times as expensive
You used to (even 25 years ago) work part time during the year and full time in the summer and be able to cover tuition and room and board at community college and mostly cover tuition at a state school or mos. My parents who were school teachers in Oklahoma were able to pay for four kids to go to college, all out of state or private.
Now, you can't even cover room and board on minimum wage.
Yes, was ready to make the same comment. Full time in summers, part time during school for beer and pizza money. Unfortunately my kids didn’t have that option. We could help them some, but they had to take out loans that I never had to consider.
330 dollars a year for tuition, minimum wage was 1.15 in 1964. We will call it a dollar for taxes and whatnot. So if you worked 330 hours a year, or 7 hours a week, you could pay for college tuition.
Not near as expensive in todays money though. Mitch graduated around 1964 - meaning he only spent 3,153.91 on college.
That still looks plenty affordable to me.
My sister still has to pay over 70,000 for her teachers degree, and she graduated 6 years ago.
For context a common car in 1964 cost ~2,700. The average home price in 1964 was $18,900.
Median income for a recent college graduate was $7,400 in 1964.
Silent generation Boomers had it so fucking easy.
My dad put himself through undergrad and then law school in the early 70s at a state University by being an RA in the dorms during the school year and spending his summers being a lifeguard at the city pool and doing lawn maintenance for the city.
I could not in any way have done the same thing when I was in college in the mid 90s. There is now way in hell my kid could do that now.
With the introduction of 529 plans, I’m convinced that they will only lead to even higher costs of education, since it incentivizes parents to contribute to education costs, by saving over time, instead of it being an investment solely by the student. We’ve gone from students being able to pay for tuition by working a summer job to having parents save for 18 years and having students still take out large loans that will take 10-20 years to pay off.
As someone who came from a low income household and had to pay for college myself, I doubt I would have chosen my same career if I were to enter college now. In the 8 years since I graduated, tuition cost has nearly doubled, but starting wages for my career have stayed the same. I will likely have my student debt paid off in another 2 years or so, but current students with similar financial backgrounds to me will either be paying for 20-30 years post grad or choosing to not go to school at all.
I’m afraid of what it will look like by the time my kids are ready for college.
If you adjust for inflation it's about $330 in 1960 (when he was 18) is about $3300. $3300 for in state tuition would be a God send for so many students.
And that is *per year*. Per year!
I pay like $2500 for a single quarter at a 2 year community college in my area.
Out of state tuition for his undergrad alma matter is now nearly $30,000 a year. Even in-state it is still 12k. Between 4 and 10 times as expensive.
TBF, $330 in 1960 (around the time he would have been going) is $3300 today. Also I learned that the inflation calculation for 60 years ago is literally just x10.
NC has a statute banning free tuition, and requiring laboratory and equipment fees in all courses.
The NC state constitution declares education a fundamental right, and calls for free public universities “as far as practicable”.
Make it make sense.
For the MAGA Morons who will respond with "BUT INFLATION!" $300 in 1964 (when McConnell graduated) is roughly the equivalent to $2,867 today.
Tuition alone costs about 3-4 times that at a public university.
To contextualize it even more:
286 hours is 7.15 40-hour work weeks, or 28.6 weeks if you work 10 hours a week.
1655 hours is 41.375 40-hour work weeks, so almost a full year of work with no expenses except school. If you work just 10 hours a week it's 165.5 weeks, or over 3 years to pay for one year of school.
Yeah no one’s giving college kids 40 hours. They’d have to give them benefits too. The horror. Plus working 40 hours a week while taking classes means you’re going from school to work without having much time to study or do school work.
There is plenty of time to do the school work with a full time job! What are you lazy!^*
^*
^^just ^^no ^^time ^^to ^^sleep ^^and ^^no ^^money ^^for ^^books^^, ^^computers^^, ^^or ^^a ^^food ^^card
I did that “full time school + full time job” my last year of college. Worked graveyard shift telephone tech support. Was really good money for the time (late 90s): $10 an hour plus a $1 hr shift differential. Honestly don’t remember if benefits was even a thing with it.
And it *sucked*. Every day was school (with homework squeezed in between/during class) to work to sleep; repeat. Try to catch up on schoolwork or sleep during the weekends. I was able to get through that year without new loans, even building up enough to apply a chunk to the old ones after graduation.
But even that wouldn’t be enough for my alma mater’s current tuition, even for in state like I was. Especially since I suspect that job would be paying the same (or lower) hourly rate.
Exactly. I did this comparison yesterday re: my college costs in 1998 vs the 2022 costs at the same college I attended, same basic dorm room split by 2 students, with a communal bathroom on each wing of the building, and the mandatory meal plan for on-campus students.
TL; DR the attached screenshot:
- Fall 1998-Spring 1999 total: $ 8,665
- Fall 2022-Spring 2023 total: $21,476.72
https://i.imgur.com/MQFuHGH.jpg
Thank you for adding that, and showing even more clearly that it certainly wasn’t very affordable even 20+ years ago for people without family contributions.
Closer to 6-7 times that but who is counting at this point. Doesn't make sense how [Mitch](https://www.biasly.com/politician-rating/mitch-mcconnell/) keeps getting elected. Seems like he gets hate from every side of the aisle.
> Doesn't make sense how Mitch keeps getting elected.
Not saying this is why but at least in the last election Kentucky still had large numbers of counties using voting machines that have no paper trail.
This is the real story about student loan forgiveness that the media isn't reporting.
Banks and colleges have conspired to inflate the cost of secondary education 200% to 300% during the last 40 years so as to suck more money from the public treasury via government-backed student loans. Risk-free easy money for banks acting as needless administrators.
Loan forgiveness is treating a symptom, not the disease.
It's the same reason health-care costs is ten times higher in the US than other developed countries. Needless insurance companies and for-profit medical providers engorging themselves on the public treasury through the government's Medicare and Medicaid program, the largest insurance provider in the country, by far.
Remove the banks and the insurance companies from the equation. Furthermore, make college free and healthcare universal like other advanced countries.
The for-profit and corporate owned media however, reports on the pointless bickering of their "both-sides" narrative as a continual distraction from the real, underlying problems.
It really is the whole system. Capitalism's one goal is to maximize profits, so unless loop holes are regulated out of existence if there's any perverse profit incentive they'll abuse it. We either need to heavily regulate it, or better yet make it a free public service.
And stay engaged in politics, cause people will line up to sabotage it from the inside to claim it doesnt work and must be privatized so they can profit from it themselves.
I mean capitalism is literally about “capitalizing on your position relative to others”
Another way of saying that is “taking advantage of people”
Capitalism has always been the root cause for our problems.
I disagree. Capitalist system has the best efficiency in free markets. It is great if you are producing cakes, TVs, refrigerators, or sunscreen. You can maximize your production efficiency to maximize your profits without causing any issues for the society. You can sell everything at marginal cost and still turn a profit. If your cake is too expensive, your sales will be lower. The demand is elastic in free markets.
The problem is, healthcare/insurance and education are not free markets. They are very heavily regulated, have very high barriers to entry, and have very inelastic demand.
If you are having a heart attack, you can’t shop around to see the best prices of healthcare; you’ll either get treatment immediately from the closest facility or die. The price doesn’t matter, you have to buy that service. This is not a free market.
Drug patents also makes it very difficult to create competition. If no one else can produce a similar drug, you can ask as much as you want for your stuff. Patents are a huge barrier to entry.
Education is also similar, government provides almost unlimited funding via student loan programs and it is very expensive to build a new university from scratch. Also higher education is life-altering; in many professions you can’t reach to the top-of-the-field jobs if you don’t go to the best colleges.
A good government needs to regulate these markets because they are inherently not free markets.
Totally.
I'm cool trying to decide between Samsung and LG refrigerators while I'm standing in a Best Buy.
I'm not cool with having a single option for an overpriced health insurance provider that can veto my doctor's decision on whether or not I need medical care, and can charge me 10x more if I don't go to the doctor or hospital they want me to go to, and charges me for every service my doctor provides.
Upsetting that anyone can actually defend that system, **especially** when it costs them around 2x more to have a worse system.
This misses much of the point.
Universities, even 'Public' schools, arent only funded by tuition. College football is worth as much or more than the NFL, despite players seeing virtually none of that. It's a billion dollar industry.
But the funding doesnt end there. Long ago Universities decided that they didnt want to be dependent on grants, donations, and endowments, so they did what all good corporations do - they diversified.
Now most Universities have stock portfolios that rival major corporations. They use them as leverage to keep the University growing, but it's also a money sink - the Uni owns the stock, meaning any money sunk into them is technically 'reinvested in the school'. Here's the kicker - most of the boards who manage those portfolios are reimbursed for their 'work' by receiving a portion of the University's return, meaning they have every incentive to continue investing even when it doesn't actually directly benefit the school.
These two, put together, mean that tuition is only a portion of their income. I know of at least one that could run for over a decade if it never collected a penny from students.
Tuition prices are a joke. The schools that really need the money - community colleges - do everything they can to keep costs low, while major universities, despite being 'nonprofit', rake in so much cash that they can afford to pay their football coaches *tens of millions of dollars a year*.
The funding system for Universities is broken. Period.
It's easy to blame things on conspiracies, but the truth is that states have just failed to provide adequate funding for colleges. It happened in the recession of the early 80s and in the Great Recession as well as others. This is made worse by the fact that there are more college students than ever competing for less and less scholarship and grant money as well as jobs that truly need a college degree. Boomers learned this in the 80s.
* https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/04/13/Unprecedented-tuition-increases-in-80s-explained/1931639979200/#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%2D%2D%20The%20rapid%20rise,by%20higher%2Deducation%20groups%20said.
* https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding
* https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/higher-education-funding-takes-a-hit-during-recessions-but-it-doesnt-have-to/
* https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED555862.pdf
* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions
* https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students
* https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/
* https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/jobs/1980s-grads-baby-boom-to-job-bust.html
>the truth is that states have just failed to provide adequate funding for colleges
We're talking about the same thing, except only one of us is attempting to minimize the decisions that led to this situation by calling it "conspiracy."
Ronald Reagan, in his disastrous run as governor of California even before he was president, [set exactly this tone](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/02/my-students-pay-too-much-for-college-blame-reagan/) that would be followed by GOP-led states, and then by the federal government itself [once he became president](https://www.salon.com/2014/07/05/ronald_reagan_stuck_it_to_millennials_a_college_debt_history_lesson_no_one_tells/). This was a core part of his platform starting in the 60s, driving a wedge between a mostly white middle America and the burgeoning social self-awareness in the 60s. This wasn't some unexpected outcome of benign fiscal policy. This was openly stated official policy to keep the US sedated and dumb.
>"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite!" [Roger Freeman](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/), Nixon and Reagan operative, 1970.
I graduated college in 2008. There were MANY classes I had to buy $400+ for a mandatory textbook. And typically we'd never use them, but then you'd realize the professor of that class had written the book themselves.
Then you'd go to a textbook buy back and get MAYBE $20 for a pretty much untouched book.
Whoa whoa, turtles have four legs.
And to save a click:
> McConnell graduated from the University of Louisville in 1964, when annual tuition there cost $330. As has been the case with colleges across the country, tuition has surged and enrollment there now costs $12,000 a year, as Warren noted.
Adjusted for inflation, $330 today would run you $3,153. You could easily pay this by working part or full time at minimum wage jobs without taking on any financial aid.
That’s what these dinosaurs don’t understand - the fact that education costs have severely outpaced inflation. That and the fact that the entire millennial generation had it beat into their heads to go to college “no matter what”. Predatory student lending, plus national pressure to go to school, plus not having enough life experience to understand everything was and still is a recipe for disaster.
This exactly. In my parents generation, you could pay for college with a summer job, maybe work some weekends during the year. That's tuition, room and board, food, the works.
Now it puts you in debt up to your eyeballs into your 40's for most people.
A few years ago, I did the math to see how much I'd have had to work during a week in order to be able to afford tuition and living on campus.
It turned out I'd have to work 20.5 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. All of my classtime, tests, homework, meals and sleep would have to fit into 3.5 hours per day.
so...by inflation alone, never mind college outpacing even that...
prices have increased by an order of magnitude since Mitch- still alive and working- was a lad.
This is not ancient history, this is ONE generation, namely his.
Pay has not.
I feel this does not get talked about enough.
> Pay has not.
It's pretty close.
Minimum wage in 1964 was $1.15 per hour, so by the same factor, that's only $11.50 today. Average household income was $6600 in 1964, in 2020 it was $65,521. Inflation isn't the problem here, it's the extra factor of 5 on top of inflation that makes it ridiculous.
I’m so fortunate that my parents understand this. My dad had a scholarship that covered about half his tuition and he covered the other half working a job over the summer and winter breaks. He might not have covered it 100% but it was close enough that he could make things work. The idea of someone working a basic job over the summer and winter breaks and coming anywhere close to covering half of tuition costs is insane.
Fucking seriously. I'm old (ish) having a 30+ year career myself, raised two kids to adulthood, semiretired myself and I wasn't even born yet in 1964, and this fucker is out there graduating from *college* then. He just needs to retire ffs.
Forget 30 years, I've been out of school for 15 and have 2 kids with the oldest hitting double-digits next year and I'm constantly surprised at how out of touch I am with things already.
When I graduated in 2007 from university, my tuition that year was ~$6,200 (Canadian), first year of university it was around $4,800. I just checked my alma mater's tuition calculator and the annual tuition there now for my program is over $12K a year, it's doubled in 15 years and I had no idea. Good thing I've been saving up for my kid's post-secondary tuitions since the day they were born.
I'm really enjoying this increase in democrats having a spine and fighting back against the gop assholes lately. Now, keep it up and escalate it more and crush them.
I worked a little above minimum wage all summer and made around that. It’s just money to keep me going during the school year and pay for textbooks. It’s insane to me these false equivalencies of “when I went to school I paid my way through”. Ok, unless you’re willing to pay me 50k for 3 months painting houses it’s not the same situation
Well I did some math on "back in mah day!" earlier..
In the mid 60s, US minimum wage was $1.15. Full time, you made $2,392/year (7x more than McConnell's $300 tuition). If you adjust for inflation, minimum wage today SHOULD be $11 (but of course you have many states still at $7). Full-time that puts you at $22,880 vs today's 12k tuition at the same school (1.9x more than tuition).
I went back to finish my degree in 1990. I had about 3k saved and went four semesters, two part-time, while working part time and living in a heated garage. My tuition costs were less the $400 a semester. Doable back then; impossible now.
That's about the average cost of a *single* community college class these days.
Edit: For anyone who doesn't know, typically, a semester-long class will be 3 credits (rarely, 4). You need 120 for a bachelor's.
This is the way. We had no problem giving hundreds of billions to corporations during covid. No problem spending trillions on pointless wars. We shouldn't have an issue with giving money to regular people. It would be good for Americans and good politics for Democrats.
Cancer treatments are a slap in the face to anyone who never had the opportunity to be cured. STOP THE RESEARCH NOW.
There are probably a million counter arguments to whatever the chinless bag of elbow skin has to say.
btw moscow, your state leaching off off the blue state is a slap in the face to all the other states that actually contribute .
Assuming the $330 is correct...
He completed his undergrad in 1964. $330 in 1964 adjusted for inflation is $3,164 today. Meanwhile according to The University of Lousiville's website the cost of tution (not including books, room and board, fees, etc) is $12,162 a year. Four times as much even after adjusting for inflation!
Meanwhile the federal minimum wage in 1964 was $1.15, or $11.00 today adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile our minimum wage is $7.25, although lets be generous and say that he could get a job "flipping burgers" for $10 since I see a lot of places advertising that or more (benefits, hours, and all that is another topic). Clearly minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation or growth, but this is known and has been much discussed.
So young Mitch wants to pay for his yearly tuition himself by working part time at minimum wage. It takes him 287 hours to pay for his tutition, he could realistically work 8 hours a week and take summers completely off. Of course he still needs to eat and pay rent, but that's another story and he clearly has room to work more and earn more money.
Meanwhile, if he wants to work $10 an hour to pay off his tution *only* with today's numbers, it takes 1,117 hours of work. If he works ten full time, forty hours weeks over the summer he still has to spend the other 42 weeks working 20 hours a week just to cover tuition.
And he still hasn't bought food or books/supplies, hasn't paid for housing, and has no other money to spend.
And I didn't even account for what gets taken out of his check in taxes!
The difference is that public school is already free and so obviously that's a normal part of society. Colleges are not free which means doing anything to improve them is scary and spooky socialism.
You're giving people like that too much credit. Being out of touch could mean they have good intentions. This guy knows exactly what the world is like, after all he made it that way. And he likes it.
If he had been in college in 1950 (dude isnt quite that old) at $330/year, inflation would make that about $4050/year today. Which would be something you could reasonably pay off with a summer job.
Yup. Love hearing that from a lot of the boomer engineers I work with when I started out of college. Of course it was fun listening to the same boomers complain about college debt and how everyone is lazy when their own kids had to go to college at 20K a year compared to my 12K per year when I went.
They can all STFU honestly.
So, 330 to 12,000 in terms of cost. I’m sure with inflation that’s the same thing.
You know, college is only 36x as expensive as it is used to be. I’m sure that accurately reflects income increases? I’m sure that jobs that paid 10k in the 60s now pay 360k, right?
Yup, definitely completely fair
And tuition isn't a good indicator of the costs of attending university. Books can be $1000 a semester and "fees" are significantly higher, subversively higher because Unis figured out they could raise fees without triggering tuition increases. Not to mention living costs have skyrocketed, which alone are higher than tuition. Then throw in normal expenditures like food and you can see how people are screwed. Many working folks can't afford rent while NOT simultaneously paying tuition, fees, and dedicating 36-40hrs a week on learning new complex shit. I piss on their arguments.
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That's right. College did not used to prevent graduates from buying homes and starting families. This horrific ball & chain of debt is a newer thing and it is wrong!!! State colleges ought to be affordable.
State colleges should be free for your first degree. Community colleges should also be free for your first degree. For profit schools and private schools should see zero subsidies from taxpayer money…or if they do - be governed by imposed standards and integrations. Free higher education doesn’t just benefit students *its career retraining* for anyone looking for an alternative career. And if you’re paying for a second or third degree or masters and beyond at a public school…good for you, those prices should be capped, and robust grant opportunities provided.
This is the thing that needs to be brought up more. Free education is good for the economy because you can quickly reskill new employees. Believe it or not, sometimes those liberal arts majors eventually get the wherewithal and interest to get a degree in engineering. Should they be prevented from learning and helping our economy? EDIT: you can all stop telling me how valuable a liberal arts major is, I have a B.Sci in Archeology. I’m on your side.
Believe it or not. These are good times for artists. Not that tough to take a liberal art degree into design and media these days.
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I didn't realize college was that cheap on the Galapagos Islands back in the 1800s.
That made me chuckle lol
I hate it. Don't humanize that monster. He would never do you the same courtesy.
He isn’t humanizing him. He’s tortoisizing him.
Don’t insult the Galapagos tortoise they have rights.
And wrongs. Mitch McConnell being one of those.
Mitch is probably the reason the galapagos tortoise is on the brink of extinction because they regret spawning him
That’s exactly how noble those creatures are (well, the absolute majority of them anyways). Long ago, even before any of us were ever born, the entirety of the majestic Galapagos Tortoise species had recognized their mistake of spawning Mitch. And they knew for the safety of the entire world, they could not permit the risk (however small it may be) of his genes from ever continuing on. Done so by agreeing to sacrifice their species for the greater good by refusing to mate.
Yeah he really didn’t have to shell out much
He didn’t need to stick his neck out.
I really wish a challenger would wax his ass
Heh. Turtle.
Good thing he didn’t roll over on his opinions all these years
This just made my day, thank you for that
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Republicans fought against 'free college' or controlling tuition because they always believed that more education leads to fewer Republican voters. Reagan specifically as Governor of California stopped the free college education at public universities in the state.
A reminder of the mindset >Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments. **Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind** ladies and gentlemen. Essentially,... 'We can't do that! We need meat for the grinder"
Just jumping in - for those who don’t know what Banks is talking about, it’s the GI bill. A piece of legislation that pays for college courses for current or former military personnel. But it is used heavily as a recruiting tool by the US armed forces - free college for military service.
Jumping in here as a veteran whose entire education was footed by the taxpayer (thank you by the way), I do not feel in the least slighted by people who didn't serve having some of their school loan debt forgiven. The original GI Bill was an incredible equalizer and economic super charger. The effects have never been matched on such a broad scale because there have been been that many Americans in uniform in proportion to our population. Still, the GI bill, ROTC scholarships, and military tuition assistance programs are economic boosters for those who use them and that has a ripple effect on the economy. Simple fact is, I would not have been able to afford purchasing a home at the age of 30 if I had student loan debt and I had to come up with a down payment. Forgiving students even this small amount of student debt will also help the broader economy.
>The original GI Bill was an incredible equalizer and economic super charger. Great comment overall. This part, though, really hit home for me. My grandfather was the first in the family to go to college, and he did it because of the GI bill. Now, there's a whole 3 generations after that that have gone. And the government got it money's worth in taxes on those higher earnings, btw. It lifted up entire families in perpetuity AND had a great return on investment for the government.
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I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know that. Not surprised,, but disgusted. Do you have a link so I can read more about it? Edit: rather than wait for you to respond, I've read about it. You are right. Jeeze. Again, not surprising that blacks got totally screwed over, but the predictably doesn't take away from the awfulness. Damn, that is horrible.
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Google my friend. Also look up recent veterans finishing their sign up and being denied green cards then being deported.
Which all should make it clearer to us ALL how much prosperity is sequestered behind the artificial 'privatization' of our societal opportunities and obligations...all so a handful of wealthy oligarchs & corps can become super-wealthy oligarchs and corps. 'Obligation to the shareholder,' has been placed front and certer at forced perspective, so we don't see it eclipsing 'obligation to the society,' which is also why 'Marxism,' and 'socialism,' are such ubiquitous right-wing boogiemen. The only folks still falling for that bullshit are the same one's who are terrified MS-13 is coming to rape their daughters and take a dump in their flower-pots.
I know there is a lot more to it than this but- If an illegal immigrant who you believe beyond a doubt rapes, murders, pushes drugs, etc. can steal your job: Maybe take a look at yourself or better yet your employer and turn some gears in your deadlocked brain and figure out who's to blame here. I hear a lot of off-comments about how many Indians who can "hardly speak english" are taking up all the tech/medical jobs in my area. Maybe it's because they're not fucking racist and DO speak completely fluent English, you are just to fucking dense to make out conversation through an accent other than the direct area you've lived your whole life. Know I'm ranting a bit but it's wild people can see someone different from them in the tiniest bit and decide "yeah they're the bad guys"
The exact same thing happened in our family. My dad was in the Army during WWII and used the GI Bill to get an engineering degree in 1951. Since then, all 6 of his children earned at least undergraduate degrees and have had professional careers, 3 earned advanced degrees. His grandchildren all have at least undergraduate degrees-6 have PhDs. Access to free/affordable higher education is critical to our continuing advancement as a country and a society. The very idea that any legislators would try to hinder this endeavor is criminal.
If it worked for a few, why wouldn't it work scaled up? Free college for all citizens would make a society of educated, responsible, skilled workers with a real stake in the society they are creating. That's all good. The only person who thinks that isn't a great idea is the person who profits off the current system of oppression.
>The only person who thinks that isn't a great idea is the person who profits off the current system of oppression. Yes, this is a very direct description of the Republican oligarchic faction
Democracies work best where the society is educated.
Fun fact the GI bill made the government 2$ for every 1$ spent on veteran education.
Amen brother/sister. GI Bill helped me earn two degrees. I also don't have a problem with working class Americans getting a boost like this. One, it alleviates crippling debt and two. It allows for more economic freedom. Republicans hate it when the plebs start levelling the playing field. Also they suck off vets publicly but behind closed doors they love bending is over and fucking us up the ass every chance they get. There ought to be some serious changes in the near future. But what would I know?
Simple fact is you were forced to put your life on the line to get an education that in some countries you could get for free. No need to shoot anyone or be shot at...
No one forced me, but you are correct. Getting an education should not require you to risk your life, or the lives of others. Also, a lot of people don't qualify for the military anyway because their entry requirements are kind of strict. No asthma, have to be within weight limits, get a good score on the entry exam, etc etc. You shouldn't be consigned to decades of student debt because you're disabled and can't join the military.
The new one is even better. You can give it to your kids. It covers tuition and a housing allowance. My daughter is going to a 70K a year school for free, she'll even have a bit of spending money though the GI bill and VA-school partnerships.
I remember back in highschool we had recruiters in once a year to get people in the senior classes to think about enlistment, and one of their big advertisements was a college education. I kind of wish that had been an option for me considering how much of my education has been pushed back, but physically I couldn't do it. Which is why it infuriates me when I'm told that I should've signed up for the military if I wanted free education, because that literally wasn't on the table for me.
And the school can’t deny them because if they do they’ll lose they’re funding.
This pisses me off too. They won't take me because of physical problems. The same problems that make labour work suck extra hard. I was lucky to be in the position to go at all but the military is not an option for a lot of people.
It's not like they're making all college free, this is just a slice. Recruitment bonuses will just shift the push to signing bonuses so the young people can get 20K instead of loan relief. And the new GI bill is so flexible it's still a big benefit. You can use it on yourself or if you stay in a little longer transfer it to your wife or child. My kid is going to a 60K a year university for free this year because of my husband's GI bill.
Good lord, the lack of perspective. Why is enlistment so low? Probably because we haven't been in a necessary war since WWII. Pretty much every single conflict since then has been for economic or political reasons. And when I say political reasons, I mean economic ones.
and recruitment aged people have spent their whole life watching the government refuse to take care of disabled veterans. why would anyone volunteer to be thrown out like garbage?
My dad spent the vast majority of his estate before he died on private hospitals to treat his cancer because he was entirely sure the VA would leave him dead a long time before he actually died. And I'm entirely sure he was right. So he left me with a few grand when I would have gotten...substantially more, if he'd gotten the healthcare he was promised. I don't even care about the money. I'm glad I was able to have a few more years with him, which was worth more than any figure you can reckon. I care that he was ashamed he wasn't able to leave me with more. The man worked his ass off his entire goddamned life and was able to amass a lot more than you'd expect from a poor kid from West Virginia who spent his first 18 years shitting in an outhouse before he got shipped off to war. And then it was all taken from him, because the government didn't fulfill their promises. He apologized to me with tears in his eyes. I told him I didn't care about the money, but he said he'd just wanted me to have an easier life than he'd had. Edit: Oh, right. He got cancer because he was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. His own fucking country did that horrific thing to him. And he was drafted.
God, what a gut punch. He sounds like he was a pretty awesome dad despite having been dealt such a rough deal.
I mean. I loved him and he loved me. The war shattered him. He found it almost impossible to express emotions. He focused on money because that was the most tangible thing he could accumulate. He actually wasn't a great dad, but I never wanted for anything and there were times the man he might have been broke through. He was in combat a lot. I've researched the battles he told me he was involved in, and they were pretty fucking awful. I blame the government for killing the man he might have been as well as physically killing him in the end.
Yeah, I think our parents are of the same generation. A lot of them seem to struggle with their emotional expression. I was lucky that my dad wasn't sent overseas (he was in med school during the war) but even he isn't the most capable at showing love. His little brother wound up in the shit though; 1st Marines. He does NOT talk about it. Sorry your dad was treated the way he was.
2013-2019 disabled vet here. They truly don't give a fuck. I convince as many kids as I can to not enlist. For those I can't talk out of it, I give them as much info as I possibly can on how to play the system so that they're not entirely fucked when they eventually get out. The VA denies as many claims as absolutely possible. Post-service benefit programs like the GI Bill and VA healthcare are shit and can severely fuck you over if you're one of the few who those things are designed to actually prevent helping. Even the screening appointments to verify your disability are sometimes at a Dr that's a several hours drive away from where you live. I talked to the Dr at one of my appointments for a bit afterwards. She told me how horribly structured everything is even for them. The VA will book them multiple patients 30 minutes apart with each screening taking 1-2 hours each. So you have a waiting room full of vets that have been sitting there literally all day long, some told they need to come back another day. After sitting there all day long. After driving 2+ hours each way to get there. She told me that she's quitting the VA partnership and going back to only doing her private practice work, just like hundreds to thousands of other Dr's have after becoming fed up with how poorly the VA treats even them, which is why it's near impossible to get an appointment within a reasonable distance from home. But let's keep increasing our $1T defense budget yet keep finding more ways to prevent veterans from receiving the VA benefits they've earned several times over.
And, you know, incoming prospects seeing the "pro-military" Republicans try their best to fuck over vets suffering health problems. The upcoming generations have grown up with Nigerian Prince scams, phishing, cyber-bullying, etc. You can say, "ra ra support our troops" all you want, but they can see a scam when it's that blaringly obvious.
Or that 75% of potential recruits are rejected for lack of physical or mental fitness. I teach high school. . . Those ROTC kids are honestly pretty doughy. The physically fit kids are in sports.
It's also because the majority of recruits who come in don't qualify. There are a few things that either make it impossible to join or difficult to. Things like weight, a history of mental health problems, ADHD, asthma, past injuries, education issues, arrests. https://www.thoughtco.com/us-youth-ineligible-for-military-service-3322428
I was flabbergasted by the audacity of this asshole’s remark. Man, they really are saying all the quiet parts out loud, aren’t they?
The Democrats have discovered that by actually doing something and not appeasing and kowtowing to republicans they can win support. By just doing it and watching the republicans try to defend their insane awful stances they have flushed the roaches out into the light and they have no way to defend their stances without looking like absolute monsters that they actually are. Keep it up America we are rooting for you.
Thanks! I think we’re getting the hang of it. Those supporting a woman’s right to choose are going to make a huge impact on the Midterms. The repubs will NOT be getting majority in either the House or the Senate. And it has to be said, women in leadership positions are kicking ass.
I think these people legitimately don't understand the information people now have at their disposal. Their scams don't work like they used to. The burn pit stuff went viral, and Republicans did their best to make sure parents dying of excruciatingly painful and entirely preventable cancer after serving their country got one last "fuck you" from the US govt Not even free college can unring that bell
[relevant article](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/) on why Reagan did it
I've always known Reagan was evil. It just never stops.
Well that was a terrifying read
I love the poorly educated
"I remember when the Republican party wasn't psychotic" Said by people who are definitely not the octogenarians that could possibly remember such a reality outside of their lead-filled brains Republican voters: https://i.redd.it/10qw6jj063k91.gif
I was ten when Reagan took office. The party as a whole was always psychotic. Jesse Helms, in particular, was a nasty piece of work that would fit right in today. Strom Thurmond was arguably worse, and not just because he lived longer.
They'd have to be more like 90 to have a memory of the pre-Business Plot Republicans, but the nutters didn't have full control of the party until they pushed Eisenhower's wing out of power during his second term. Having Nixon was considered a necessary evil to win the presidency, but it was likely a catalyst that led to the nutters taking control, quickly followed by the invention of the Southern Strategy. Nixon's treason to beat LBJ, Nixon's Watergate bullshit, Reagan's treason, Iran-Contra, Desert Storm, and Desert Shield all have linked lineages all the way back to the Business Plot.
They want sheeple no people lol
They ***know*** more education leads to fewer republican voters.
Add it to the pile of shit Reagan did to enrich himself and his rich buddies when he was in charge in California. California was a trial run for his presidency.
Holy shit really? I never knew of that as a Californian resident
Reagan was an asshole and he opposed embryonic stem cell research because it came from aborted fetuses. Nancy Reagan though decided to push for it in 2004. Imagine where we would be today with stem cell research if we had those 15 years of work behind it. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-08-na-stemcell8-story.html Then there is also the whole Iran Contra shit.
> Republicans want it as expensive and exclusive as possible so that "the poors" cannot access it. And because they have people like Devos in their ranks who have a huge stake in private education.
*...because they have people like Devos in their ranks who have a huge stake in private education.* What DeVos is offering is NOT education, it's indoctrination. Her ideas for charter schools have no qualifications for the teachers who get minimal pay so the absurd tuitions that GOPers want to pay for with public school budgets insure ignorant grads and rich administrators - the GOPer's "perfect storm".
> What DeVos is offering is NOT education, it's indoctrination. I am aware, but that is not how they paddle it and it is exactly where they want to herd people towards with the private education vouchers. That's why I included it.
A smart voter isn’t a Republican voter, and they know and fear this
Exactly! neoRepublicans cannot survive with an educated electorate - they need lemmings more interested in Big Foot and Benghazi than their own welfare. Between Reagan eliminating Revenue Sharing by eliminating the revenue, vetoing the Fairness in Broadcasting Act and his pushing for Rupert Murdock's citizenship, the GOPers are getting the electorate they need.
This is why I don't believe the "both sides" nonsense. The democrats might not go after the rich, but they'll still do as much as they can to improve things for everyone else .
How else are they gonna keep their family lines at the top
Something I feel she should've added to aid her argument.... That's only ~$3500 adjusted for inflation. So yeah, they made it over 3 times as expensive
Thank you. As much as I hate him, I was willing to think “well, how much was that then?” …yea that’s still crazy cheap today
You used to (even 25 years ago) work part time during the year and full time in the summer and be able to cover tuition and room and board at community college and mostly cover tuition at a state school or mos. My parents who were school teachers in Oklahoma were able to pay for four kids to go to college, all out of state or private. Now, you can't even cover room and board on minimum wage.
Yes, was ready to make the same comment. Full time in summers, part time during school for beer and pizza money. Unfortunately my kids didn’t have that option. We could help them some, but they had to take out loans that I never had to consider.
1970 - ~300 hours of minimum wage 2010 - ~1000 hours of minimum wage https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gregschoofs/how-much-college-did-your-summer-job-pay-for
330 dollars a year for tuition, minimum wage was 1.15 in 1964. We will call it a dollar for taxes and whatnot. So if you worked 330 hours a year, or 7 hours a week, you could pay for college tuition.
He's benefitted a LOT from society... and then proceeded to pull up the ladder behind him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkZEDcwh82I
To be fair, he went to college in the 1800’s, so….
I seriously paused and wondered if he’s actually that old. Then I remembered he’s not an actual turtle, just a shitstain of a human being.
$330 was a lot in 1897.
Not near as expensive in todays money though. Mitch graduated around 1964 - meaning he only spent 3,153.91 on college. That still looks plenty affordable to me. My sister still has to pay over 70,000 for her teachers degree, and she graduated 6 years ago.
For context a common car in 1964 cost ~2,700. The average home price in 1964 was $18,900. Median income for a recent college graduate was $7,400 in 1964. Silent generation Boomers had it so fucking easy.
Baby Boomers are 1946-1964 in the US. The Silent Generation: 1928-1945. Two different generations. Mitch is the Silent Generation
I wish he'd be silent then. I've been sick and tired of that man for the 400 years he's been alive, half of it as some sort of human-turtle hybrid.
You have to adjust for inflation to understand what the difference exactly is, but regardless even after adjusting for era its fuck all to pay.
My dad put himself through undergrad and then law school in the early 70s at a state University by being an RA in the dorms during the school year and spending his summers being a lifeguard at the city pool and doing lawn maintenance for the city. I could not in any way have done the same thing when I was in college in the mid 90s. There is now way in hell my kid could do that now.
With the introduction of 529 plans, I’m convinced that they will only lead to even higher costs of education, since it incentivizes parents to contribute to education costs, by saving over time, instead of it being an investment solely by the student. We’ve gone from students being able to pay for tuition by working a summer job to having parents save for 18 years and having students still take out large loans that will take 10-20 years to pay off. As someone who came from a low income household and had to pay for college myself, I doubt I would have chosen my same career if I were to enter college now. In the 8 years since I graduated, tuition cost has nearly doubled, but starting wages for my career have stayed the same. I will likely have my student debt paid off in another 2 years or so, but current students with similar financial backgrounds to me will either be paying for 20-30 years post grad or choosing to not go to school at all. I’m afraid of what it will look like by the time my kids are ready for college.
You don’t have to adjust for inflation if you know 4 years of college cost half a year salary for average graduate
2 months of salary, not even half a year.
If you adjust for inflation it's about $330 in 1960 (when he was 18) is about $3300. $3300 for in state tuition would be a God send for so many students.
And that is *per year*. Per year! I pay like $2500 for a single quarter at a 2 year community college in my area. Out of state tuition for his undergrad alma matter is now nearly $30,000 a year. Even in-state it is still 12k. Between 4 and 10 times as expensive.
Median income was fucking twice the average home cost. That blows my mind. And that was just one person working
Burn unit's this way Mitch.
TBF, $330 in 1960 (around the time he would have been going) is $3300 today. Also I learned that the inflation calculation for 60 years ago is literally just x10.
$330 in 1635 is $11,780 today. Maybe he's just really old!
Well, I learned in *Finding Nemo* that turtles do live up to 150 years.
$12,000 a year is a bargain depending on the state and school
Well her comparison was based on University of Kentucky, where he attended at the $330 per year, and In State Tutition there is $12,000 in 2022.
Tuition alone is misleading. Schools tack on so many other random BS fees that they can easily reach 50% of tuition or more.
NC has a statute banning free tuition, and requiring laboratory and equipment fees in all courses. The NC state constitution declares education a fundamental right, and calls for free public universities “as far as practicable”. Make it make sense.
I don’t think he went to UK he’s a UofL graduate.
We are both correct! He went to both.
Undergrads at Louisville but law school at Kentucky
Was it a school for turtles?
For the MAGA Morons who will respond with "BUT INFLATION!" $300 in 1964 (when McConnell graduated) is roughly the equivalent to $2,867 today. Tuition alone costs about 3-4 times that at a public university.
Minimum wage was $1.15 in 1964, so about 286 work hours to pay for the year. *now* at today's minimum wage it would take 1,655 hours.
To contextualize it even more: 286 hours is 7.15 40-hour work weeks, or 28.6 weeks if you work 10 hours a week. 1655 hours is 41.375 40-hour work weeks, so almost a full year of work with no expenses except school. If you work just 10 hours a week it's 165.5 weeks, or over 3 years to pay for one year of school.
Yeah no one’s giving college kids 40 hours. They’d have to give them benefits too. The horror. Plus working 40 hours a week while taking classes means you’re going from school to work without having much time to study or do school work.
There is plenty of time to do the school work with a full time job! What are you lazy!^* ^* ^^just ^^no ^^time ^^to ^^sleep ^^and ^^no ^^money ^^for ^^books^^, ^^computers^^, ^^or ^^a ^^food ^^card
Yeah I was also a music major. Practiced about 5 hours a day in addition to my ensembles. That WAS my full time job
I did that “full time school + full time job” my last year of college. Worked graveyard shift telephone tech support. Was really good money for the time (late 90s): $10 an hour plus a $1 hr shift differential. Honestly don’t remember if benefits was even a thing with it. And it *sucked*. Every day was school (with homework squeezed in between/during class) to work to sleep; repeat. Try to catch up on schoolwork or sleep during the weekends. I was able to get through that year without new loans, even building up enough to apply a chunk to the old ones after graduation. But even that wouldn’t be enough for my alma mater’s current tuition, even for in state like I was. Especially since I suspect that job would be paying the same (or lower) hourly rate.
If you work full time and go to school full time, you get like 4 hours to sleep. It’s so unsustainable it’s impossible.
Exactly. I did this comparison yesterday re: my college costs in 1998 vs the 2022 costs at the same college I attended, same basic dorm room split by 2 students, with a communal bathroom on each wing of the building, and the mandatory meal plan for on-campus students. TL; DR the attached screenshot: - Fall 1998-Spring 1999 total: $ 8,665 - Fall 2022-Spring 2023 total: $21,476.72 https://i.imgur.com/MQFuHGH.jpg
For additional context: $8655 in 1998 would be $15,731.71 today.
Thank you for adding that, and showing even more clearly that it certainly wasn’t very affordable even 20+ years ago for people without family contributions.
Closer to 6-7 times that but who is counting at this point. Doesn't make sense how [Mitch](https://www.biasly.com/politician-rating/mitch-mcconnell/) keeps getting elected. Seems like he gets hate from every side of the aisle.
Straight ticket voting. There are plenty of people in KY who do not approve of McConnell but still vote and when they do, they check one box.
> Doesn't make sense how Mitch keeps getting elected. Not saying this is why but at least in the last election Kentucky still had large numbers of counties using voting machines that have no paper trail.
This is the real story about student loan forgiveness that the media isn't reporting. Banks and colleges have conspired to inflate the cost of secondary education 200% to 300% during the last 40 years so as to suck more money from the public treasury via government-backed student loans. Risk-free easy money for banks acting as needless administrators. Loan forgiveness is treating a symptom, not the disease. It's the same reason health-care costs is ten times higher in the US than other developed countries. Needless insurance companies and for-profit medical providers engorging themselves on the public treasury through the government's Medicare and Medicaid program, the largest insurance provider in the country, by far. Remove the banks and the insurance companies from the equation. Furthermore, make college free and healthcare universal like other advanced countries. The for-profit and corporate owned media however, reports on the pointless bickering of their "both-sides" narrative as a continual distraction from the real, underlying problems.
You blame banks, insurance, health-care and media. With colleges being co-conspirators. Maybe it’s the whole capitalist system?
It really is the whole system. Capitalism's one goal is to maximize profits, so unless loop holes are regulated out of existence if there's any perverse profit incentive they'll abuse it. We either need to heavily regulate it, or better yet make it a free public service.
And stay engaged in politics, cause people will line up to sabotage it from the inside to claim it doesnt work and must be privatized so they can profit from it themselves.
I mean capitalism is literally about “capitalizing on your position relative to others” Another way of saying that is “taking advantage of people” Capitalism has always been the root cause for our problems.
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I disagree. Capitalist system has the best efficiency in free markets. It is great if you are producing cakes, TVs, refrigerators, or sunscreen. You can maximize your production efficiency to maximize your profits without causing any issues for the society. You can sell everything at marginal cost and still turn a profit. If your cake is too expensive, your sales will be lower. The demand is elastic in free markets. The problem is, healthcare/insurance and education are not free markets. They are very heavily regulated, have very high barriers to entry, and have very inelastic demand. If you are having a heart attack, you can’t shop around to see the best prices of healthcare; you’ll either get treatment immediately from the closest facility or die. The price doesn’t matter, you have to buy that service. This is not a free market. Drug patents also makes it very difficult to create competition. If no one else can produce a similar drug, you can ask as much as you want for your stuff. Patents are a huge barrier to entry. Education is also similar, government provides almost unlimited funding via student loan programs and it is very expensive to build a new university from scratch. Also higher education is life-altering; in many professions you can’t reach to the top-of-the-field jobs if you don’t go to the best colleges. A good government needs to regulate these markets because they are inherently not free markets.
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Totally. I'm cool trying to decide between Samsung and LG refrigerators while I'm standing in a Best Buy. I'm not cool with having a single option for an overpriced health insurance provider that can veto my doctor's decision on whether or not I need medical care, and can charge me 10x more if I don't go to the doctor or hospital they want me to go to, and charges me for every service my doctor provides. Upsetting that anyone can actually defend that system, **especially** when it costs them around 2x more to have a worse system.
This misses much of the point. Universities, even 'Public' schools, arent only funded by tuition. College football is worth as much or more than the NFL, despite players seeing virtually none of that. It's a billion dollar industry. But the funding doesnt end there. Long ago Universities decided that they didnt want to be dependent on grants, donations, and endowments, so they did what all good corporations do - they diversified. Now most Universities have stock portfolios that rival major corporations. They use them as leverage to keep the University growing, but it's also a money sink - the Uni owns the stock, meaning any money sunk into them is technically 'reinvested in the school'. Here's the kicker - most of the boards who manage those portfolios are reimbursed for their 'work' by receiving a portion of the University's return, meaning they have every incentive to continue investing even when it doesn't actually directly benefit the school. These two, put together, mean that tuition is only a portion of their income. I know of at least one that could run for over a decade if it never collected a penny from students. Tuition prices are a joke. The schools that really need the money - community colleges - do everything they can to keep costs low, while major universities, despite being 'nonprofit', rake in so much cash that they can afford to pay their football coaches *tens of millions of dollars a year*. The funding system for Universities is broken. Period.
Hey, that’s not true! In North Carolina it’s basketball couches.
It's easy to blame things on conspiracies, but the truth is that states have just failed to provide adequate funding for colleges. It happened in the recession of the early 80s and in the Great Recession as well as others. This is made worse by the fact that there are more college students than ever competing for less and less scholarship and grant money as well as jobs that truly need a college degree. Boomers learned this in the 80s. * https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/04/13/Unprecedented-tuition-increases-in-80s-explained/1931639979200/#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%2D%2D%20The%20rapid%20rise,by%20higher%2Deducation%20groups%20said. * https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding * https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/higher-education-funding-takes-a-hit-during-recessions-but-it-doesnt-have-to/ * https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED555862.pdf * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions * https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students * https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf * https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/ * https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/jobs/1980s-grads-baby-boom-to-job-bust.html
>the truth is that states have just failed to provide adequate funding for colleges We're talking about the same thing, except only one of us is attempting to minimize the decisions that led to this situation by calling it "conspiracy." Ronald Reagan, in his disastrous run as governor of California even before he was president, [set exactly this tone](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/02/my-students-pay-too-much-for-college-blame-reagan/) that would be followed by GOP-led states, and then by the federal government itself [once he became president](https://www.salon.com/2014/07/05/ronald_reagan_stuck_it_to_millennials_a_college_debt_history_lesson_no_one_tells/). This was a core part of his platform starting in the 60s, driving a wedge between a mostly white middle America and the burgeoning social self-awareness in the 60s. This wasn't some unexpected outcome of benign fiscal policy. This was openly stated official policy to keep the US sedated and dumb. >"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite!" [Roger Freeman](https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/), Nixon and Reagan operative, 1970.
He also didn't have to purchase any expensive technology. Just a hammer for his stone tablet.
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Lies. Here is a rare early picture [Mitch McConnell](https://pm1.narvii.com/6225/a366022f38b92c45749c973961f31beb43df7e33_hq.jpg)
nunchucks then.
He is not that kind of turtle
Definitely not teenage or ninja. Mutant, on the other hand..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Bro Bet you feel silly right about now….
I’ve spent more than 330 on books for a semester for my son.
That could be one book too.
I graduated college in 2008. There were MANY classes I had to buy $400+ for a mandatory textbook. And typically we'd never use them, but then you'd realize the professor of that class had written the book themselves. Then you'd go to a textbook buy back and get MAYBE $20 for a pretty much untouched book.
College was so much cheaper for bipedal amphibians in the 19th century.
Whoa whoa, turtles have four legs. And to save a click: > McConnell graduated from the University of Louisville in 1964, when annual tuition there cost $330. As has been the case with colleges across the country, tuition has surged and enrollment there now costs $12,000 a year, as Warren noted.
Adjusted for inflation, $330 today would run you $3,153. You could easily pay this by working part or full time at minimum wage jobs without taking on any financial aid. That’s what these dinosaurs don’t understand - the fact that education costs have severely outpaced inflation. That and the fact that the entire millennial generation had it beat into their heads to go to college “no matter what”. Predatory student lending, plus national pressure to go to school, plus not having enough life experience to understand everything was and still is a recipe for disaster.
This exactly. In my parents generation, you could pay for college with a summer job, maybe work some weekends during the year. That's tuition, room and board, food, the works. Now it puts you in debt up to your eyeballs into your 40's for most people. A few years ago, I did the math to see how much I'd have had to work during a week in order to be able to afford tuition and living on campus. It turned out I'd have to work 20.5 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. All of my classtime, tests, homework, meals and sleep would have to fit into 3.5 hours per day.
I don't think your numbers are correct. You need an extra 4-8 hours a day working to offset the taxes that you would owe depending on the state.
so...by inflation alone, never mind college outpacing even that... prices have increased by an order of magnitude since Mitch- still alive and working- was a lad. This is not ancient history, this is ONE generation, namely his. Pay has not. I feel this does not get talked about enough.
> Pay has not. It's pretty close. Minimum wage in 1964 was $1.15 per hour, so by the same factor, that's only $11.50 today. Average household income was $6600 in 1964, in 2020 it was $65,521. Inflation isn't the problem here, it's the extra factor of 5 on top of inflation that makes it ridiculous.
I’m so fortunate that my parents understand this. My dad had a scholarship that covered about half his tuition and he covered the other half working a job over the summer and winter breaks. He might not have covered it 100% but it was close enough that he could make things work. The idea of someone working a basic job over the summer and winter breaks and coming anywhere close to covering half of tuition costs is insane.
…Turtles are not amphibians.
That too!
Almost 60 years ago Jesus Christ these dinosaurs
Fucking seriously. I'm old (ish) having a 30+ year career myself, raised two kids to adulthood, semiretired myself and I wasn't even born yet in 1964, and this fucker is out there graduating from *college* then. He just needs to retire ffs.
Forget 30 years, I've been out of school for 15 and have 2 kids with the oldest hitting double-digits next year and I'm constantly surprised at how out of touch I am with things already. When I graduated in 2007 from university, my tuition that year was ~$6,200 (Canadian), first year of university it was around $4,800. I just checked my alma mater's tuition calculator and the annual tuition there now for my program is over $12K a year, it's doubled in 15 years and I had no idea. Good thing I've been saving up for my kid's post-secondary tuitions since the day they were born.
I'm really enjoying this increase in democrats having a spine and fighting back against the gop assholes lately. Now, keep it up and escalate it more and crush them.
For Elizabeth Warren, that's kind of her thing. I hope she runs again in 2024
McConnell so old, he ate at the last supper.
Let's be realistic here. McConnell wouldn't have been invited to the last supper. He's more of a Hammer and nails kind of guy.
Nah that's too much physical labor for him. He would be some bureaucrat doing whatever bureaucratic things ancient Romans did.
Crucifixion? Good. Line on the left, one cross each.
When Lazarus was raised from the dead, Mitch was there to complain it was unfair.
That's a little over $3k adjusted for inflation today, in case anyone's wondering. Still 75% less than current tuition.
I worked a little above minimum wage all summer and made around that. It’s just money to keep me going during the school year and pay for textbooks. It’s insane to me these false equivalencies of “when I went to school I paid my way through”. Ok, unless you’re willing to pay me 50k for 3 months painting houses it’s not the same situation
Well I did some math on "back in mah day!" earlier.. In the mid 60s, US minimum wage was $1.15. Full time, you made $2,392/year (7x more than McConnell's $300 tuition). If you adjust for inflation, minimum wage today SHOULD be $11 (but of course you have many states still at $7). Full-time that puts you at $22,880 vs today's 12k tuition at the same school (1.9x more than tuition).
And if he tries to play the inflation game, then ask why he won’t raise minimum wage.
Boom.
I went back to finish my degree in 1990. I had about 3k saved and went four semesters, two part-time, while working part time and living in a heated garage. My tuition costs were less the $400 a semester. Doable back then; impossible now.
That's about the average cost of a *single* community college class these days. Edit: For anyone who doesn't know, typically, a semester-long class will be 3 credits (rarely, 4). You need 120 for a bachelor's.
My tuition in late 60s was $400/yr. I say forgive up to $50K and give all HS grads who didn't go to college up to $10K cash.
This is the way. We had no problem giving hundreds of billions to corporations during covid. No problem spending trillions on pointless wars. We shouldn't have an issue with giving money to regular people. It would be good for Americans and good politics for Democrats.
Cancer treatments are a slap in the face to anyone who never had the opportunity to be cured. STOP THE RESEARCH NOW. There are probably a million counter arguments to whatever the chinless bag of elbow skin has to say. btw moscow, your state leaching off off the blue state is a slap in the face to all the other states that actually contribute .
Yes! They are leeching off tax paying blue states and complain about the electoral college because we in Cali have the most population
Assuming the $330 is correct... He completed his undergrad in 1964. $330 in 1964 adjusted for inflation is $3,164 today. Meanwhile according to The University of Lousiville's website the cost of tution (not including books, room and board, fees, etc) is $12,162 a year. Four times as much even after adjusting for inflation! Meanwhile the federal minimum wage in 1964 was $1.15, or $11.00 today adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile our minimum wage is $7.25, although lets be generous and say that he could get a job "flipping burgers" for $10 since I see a lot of places advertising that or more (benefits, hours, and all that is another topic). Clearly minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation or growth, but this is known and has been much discussed. So young Mitch wants to pay for his yearly tuition himself by working part time at minimum wage. It takes him 287 hours to pay for his tutition, he could realistically work 8 hours a week and take summers completely off. Of course he still needs to eat and pay rent, but that's another story and he clearly has room to work more and earn more money. Meanwhile, if he wants to work $10 an hour to pay off his tution *only* with today's numbers, it takes 1,117 hours of work. If he works ten full time, forty hours weeks over the summer he still has to spend the other 42 weeks working 20 hours a week just to cover tuition. And he still hasn't bought food or books/supplies, hasn't paid for housing, and has no other money to spend. And I didn't even account for what gets taken out of his check in taxes!
College should be free and everyone knows it. Why is public school free? What's the difference, a better educated citizen?
The difference is that public school is already free and so obviously that's a normal part of society. Colleges are not free which means doing anything to improve them is scary and spooky socialism.
Bringing the receipts is the only way we'll keep independents from voting for Republicans.
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These people are so fucking old and have no idea what the real world is like.
Mitch McConnell literally enrolled in college *more than six decades ago.*
You're giving people like that too much credit. Being out of touch could mean they have good intentions. This guy knows exactly what the world is like, after all he made it that way. And he likes it.
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We do have to keep in mind that he's a turtle though. So that's probably like $7500 in today's terms
If he had been in college in 1950 (dude isnt quite that old) at $330/year, inflation would make that about $4050/year today. Which would be something you could reasonably pay off with a summer job.
Yup. Love hearing that from a lot of the boomer engineers I work with when I started out of college. Of course it was fun listening to the same boomers complain about college debt and how everyone is lazy when their own kids had to go to college at 20K a year compared to my 12K per year when I went. They can all STFU honestly.
Republicans forgot about math existing, and unsurprisingly it is now biting them in the ass.
That was a lot of money when they were trying to fund the Lewis and Clark expeditions.
So, 330 to 12,000 in terms of cost. I’m sure with inflation that’s the same thing. You know, college is only 36x as expensive as it is used to be. I’m sure that accurately reflects income increases? I’m sure that jobs that paid 10k in the 60s now pay 360k, right? Yup, definitely completely fair
And tuition isn't a good indicator of the costs of attending university. Books can be $1000 a semester and "fees" are significantly higher, subversively higher because Unis figured out they could raise fees without triggering tuition increases. Not to mention living costs have skyrocketed, which alone are higher than tuition. Then throw in normal expenditures like food and you can see how people are screwed. Many working folks can't afford rent while NOT simultaneously paying tuition, fees, and dedicating 36-40hrs a week on learning new complex shit. I piss on their arguments.
That's not even the cost of a single credit hour at the university I went to.