Saturday, June 30, 2018

College didn't used to be so darned expensive

Way back in 1968 I got out of the Air Force and went to University of Delaware.  I got an electrical engineering degree that served me well for forty years.  At the time, my veteran's benefits were enough to pay all my tuition.  Tuition was so cheap that some semesters I paid more for textbooks than I did for tuition.  They hadn't invented student loans back then. And Delaware was a good school.  I never had an employer sniff at my Delaware degree over my forty years in the workforce.  
   Now a days I wound up paying $13K a year to put youngest son thru Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  I hear that any decent public university wants $8K a year.  This is about ten times what it cost me to get thru Delaware fifty years ago.  
   I think the drastic inflation of college costs was caused by student loans.  If there is plenty of loan money to be had, the students will sign up for anything, even being deep in debt for twenty years after graduation.  All the extra money has gone into really nice college buildings, and lots of college administrators, who don't teach, they just draw their pay.

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