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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

My oldest sibling attended MIT from the of 1969 to spring of 1973.  In 1969, tuition was $2,150 and a dorm room and meal plan together cost about $1,800, for total annual cost of about $4,000. The minimum wage in 1969 was $1.30 per hour. Therefore, MIT tuition (only) was 1,654 times the minimum wage.

Today the tuition (only) is almost $62,000 ($61,990) and Massachusetts minimum wage is $15 per hour. Therefore, today’s MIT tuition is 3,334 times the local state (higher than the federal and most states) minimum wage.  Room and board for one academic year is now just over $20,000, compared to my sibling's $1,800.

Bottom line:  Your experience of fifty years ago is irrelevant.[/quote]

$4000 was a lot of money in the early 1970's. You could buy a new car for $4000, and my parents were not about to buy me a new car any more than they were going to send me to MIT when the local commuter school was good enough. They didn't pay for that either, I had a co-op job with a local company and earned most of my college expenses myself.

My parents didn't believe in that "follow your dreams" nonsense, the purpose of college in their mind was to secure a middle management position at a large corporation, which is what my father did using the GI bill after WWII. As a kid growing up in the Great Depression, he never even thought about going to college and would probably have spent his life in a factory if not for Uncle Sam. He never spent any time dreaming about things that would have been impossible and he thought it was his duty to keep me aware of my limitations also.

The expectation that parents will supply most of the money for college perpetuates the belief 
that education for its own sake is a privilege reserved for students who chose their parents wisely. There needs to be a way for students from middle class backgrounds to aspire to something more than what their parents have in mind for them. That was relevant then and is still relevant today.[/quote]

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