Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Joad
I got delt a bad hand, but it could have been much worse.
I managed to play it fairly well, but it could have been played better.
But it was also a different time.
A poor kid can't do what I did today.
Minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation.
On the other hand the costs of going to college, even at a Community College or a State University like I did have gone up at a rate four to five times as fast as inflation. And the GI bill isn't as good either, although I hear there have been some recent improvements there. The numbers barely worked for me back in the day. There is no way to make them work today.
As a result kids are now graduating with student debt that is comparable to a fucking home mortgage.
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Making all college tuition free will be impractical. Heck we will not have enough teachers to go around and will also dilute the levels. But I can make a very good case for making graduate school free. Just the abuse of H1B alone is a reason.
FWIW, I mostly subsidized my undergraduate education by working two part time jobs and full time in the summers in a steel mill. But it was arrogance and independence rather than need, so it nowhere compares to what you went through. Also this was in a big city like Chicago with unlimited opportunities back then.