The Daily Tar Heel
URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2012/02/working_out_the_real_cost_of_tuition
Current Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 12:50:48 -0400
Working out the real cost of tuition
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This column is part of a series written by seniors from the pilot senior seminar on American citizenship. The class is led by its students, whose interests and experiences are as diverse as their areas of study. These columns are their lessons.
During tuition discussions at the UNC-system Board of Governors meeting this month, a student spoke of the jobs she holds to pay tuition, and a board member responded that he too had worked his way through UNC. I was impressed, but I desperately wished I could point out that his comparison to today’s students no longer holds.
While helping Student Body President Mary Cooper present her tuition plan to the UNC Board of Trustees this fall, I often vented my frustrations to my dad, a 1980 UNC graduate.
Though many trustees sympathized with students — because, they proudly proclaimed, they also worked their way through college — I had a hunch they were comparing apples and oranges. After some back-of-the-envelope calculations, my dad found why the trustees’ declarations rang false.
My dad is a hippie who attended seven colleges in eight years, and by 1976, he was playing the banjo in a bluegrass band, working in a furniture factory in Mt. Airy and attending Surry Community College. When he left the factory and transferred to UNC, he was making $2.45 an hour. (And though my dad wandered around Alaska and lived in a truck for a while, he ended up at Wharton, so I trust his numbers.)
In 1976, minimum wage rose to $2.30 an hour, and in-state tuition and fees at UNC were $270 per semester. Before taxes, it took 235 hours of minimum-wage labor to pay for a year at UNC.
Next year, in-state tuition and fees will be $7,499.81, and minimum wage is $7.25. It now takes half a year of full-time work to earn a year’s worth of tuition. That’s five times as many hours of work as it took students like my dad to pay for UNC 35 years ago.
It was still challenging for my dad to work his way through school, and I don’t want to imply that previous generations aren’t worthy of admiration for their hard work. They deserve praise for envisioning UNC as a financially accessible place (although attainable only for white men for most of the school’s history).
Students from across the state, including banjo players in Mt. Airy, recognized that UNC was within their grasp, and they used the education they received to make their state and country better.
We must recognize that working your way through UNC is a much harder undertaking than before.
I would love for my children to attend UNC 35 years from now. But if it will cost their generation five times as many hours of work as it does today, in-state students will pay $76,560 a year, plus inevitable inflation.
Few students will be able to spend 10 years working full-time to earn four years of tuition, and even those who can afford UNC will have a very different experience than previous generations.
With that student body, UNC would no longer be truly public. That generation of Tar Heels would be the worse for it.
The generations before us climbed the ladder, but we can’t let them pull it up behind them. Even with an increased emphasis on financial aid, we must frame tuition in terms of the real wages of students and their families.
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13 comments
This is a very disappointing column. When I saw the words “real cost of tuition” in the headline, I assumed the author would be calling attention to what people really play for tuition, AFTER financial aid, i.e. the actual cost instead of the sticker price. Instead, it focuses only on the sticker price in terms of cost, but then bizarrely focuses on the minimum wage in terms of students’ ability to pay. Wouldn’t it be true that anyone whose sole source of income was a minimum-wage job would in fact pay far less than the total sticker price, because of tuition? The final claim is that “we must frame tuition in terms of the real wages of students and their families.” Well, what are the real wages of the students and their families WHO GET NO FINANCIAL AID? Some of these people may be struggling in the middle class, but high income folks have seen their wealth shoot through the roof in recent decades. So the intention of this column is good, but the execution is extremely flawed.
Can we please have someone write a column on tuition and affordability who is NOT a Morehead?
I see what you’re saying, Jim, but what about students whose parents make enough money to disqualify their kids from receiving financial aid, but for one reason or another will not pay for their kid’s tuition? Perhaps they would do this because they think that if they worked their way through school, so should their kid. Those potential students now do not receive financial aid and cannot afford to pay for college. So when we bring in the financial aid argument, are we not ignoring those that must pay their own way?
The real question is why has annual rate of increase for tuition and fees been about 9.7% per year (every year) over the last 36 years? Assuming only a 3.0% inflation rate increase, the tuition after 36 years would be about $780.
Is it less subsidy per student by the NC taxpayers? Less federal taxpayer money per student? More faculty per student (doubtful)? More administration personnel per student? What was the infrastructure like 36 years ago, has some of the spending gone to buildings, etc.
The connection this article tries to make to the minimum wage does not make sense (at least to me).
I can’t believe how silly some of the other responses to this excellent article are.
Assuming that people working through college earn minimum wage, this article shows that (before financial aid) it has become much much harder to work through college at UNC than it was a few decades ago. In 1976, it took 235 hours to pay for a year at UNC. Today, it takes 1035 hours. And that’s not even taking taxes into account.
There is a fair question to be asked how much of this would be offset by financial aid. But I find it hard to believe that financial aid has increased by enough to counteract this effect.
@Really?: > Can we please have someone write a column on tuition and affordability who is NOT a Morehead?
The DTH is always crying out for writers. Why not get off your behind and write that article. That she does things like this and you just complain is probably the reason she’s a Morehead and you’re not.
Again, @truthinnumbers
> Is it less subsidy per student by the NC taxpayers? Less federal taxpayer money per student? More faculty per student (doubtful)? More administration personnel per student? What was the infrastructure like 36 years ago, has some of the spending gone to buildings, etc.
Why don’t you do some investigation of these questions? I’m sure the DTH would be happy to consider what you write.
But in general it’s many of the things you mention. The state subsidy has gone down (the people of NC have chosen to reduce their education spending), and faculty salaries have gone up. Infrastructure spending is also very high, since both researchers and undergraduates now expect much more.
That’s what you get when you sell education based on the ‘college experience’ and not on the education.
Why don’t YOU do some investigation of these questions? For example, you claim that faculty salaries have gone up. What evidence do you have for this? You also claim that infrastructure spending has contributed to the increase in tuition, but how much tuition revenue actually goes toward infrastructure? I wonder whether you can substantiate any of these bold claims.
Ohai: I don’t need to do any investigation, because I’m not the one whining about the newspaper article.
No, you’re not whining about the article, but you are spreading disinformation while masquerading as some kind of authority on the topic.
For example, you wrote: “I find it hard to believe that financial aid has increased by enough to counteract this effect.” In fact, the University Gazette this month reports that “measured in constant dollars, the average cumulative debt for 2011 graduates was $2,525 less than the average cumulative debt for those who graduated in 2000.” The number of students receiving financial aid has almost doubled in this period (from 11,501 to 20,362) and the average award has increased from $11,136 to $17,248.
Well isn’t that lovely. But it leaves loads of questions unanswered. What is the comparison with the late 70s/early 80s, which this article was about? Has debt decreased since 2000 because of financial aid, or because (1) UNC students are getting richer? (2) they are working more hours? (3) parents are paying more?
That stat alone is meaningless.
People, please stop posting questions and start posting answers. Seriously… you are only adding to ignorance.
One nice thing about the internet is that it allows you to access already-done research with the same amount of effort it takes you to make a snarky comment. Here’s an excellent interview with the authors of a book that came out recently called “Why does college cost so much?”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/why-does-college-cost-so-much/
I first heard about this book on the American Radioworks podcast, here’s a link to an interview they did:
http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/americanradioworks/podcast/arw_4_43_college_costs_redux.mp3
I thought this was a well-written column. I don’t see why being a Morehead scholar should preclude Lily from making an economic observation.
Exactly right….there are at least four columnists who are also Morehead-Cain scholars. Can the Edit Board not recruit a more representative voice for the student body? I know more than four people on this campus can write eloquently…
And Lily, you know nothing about the tuition debate because you’ve never had to pay tuition. Next.
really?
Are you serious? These people you know who write more eloquently, have they ever applied to write for the DTH?
And noone who doesn’t pay tuition or hasn’t can have an opinion about tuition? Ridiculous. Can’t I have an opinion about Afghanistan even though I’ve never been in the military? Or about abortion even though I’ve never been pregnant?
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