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If you are a resident of Florida a credit hour at Florida State will run you $215.55 plus books. Out of state tuition is $721.10, just for the record.
You need 120 credits minimum to get your bachelor's. There's some requirements for how many credits you have to have at FSU and how many credits have to be above a certain level.
That's $25,866.
Let's assume that your part time job is at someplace that's paying $15 an hour.
That's 1,724.4 hours.
Except... A place to live, food to eat, transportation, taxes, etc...
But let's assume you have a benefactor and don't have to pay taxes.
Most "part time" work is 20 or fewer hours a week.
86.22 weeks at 20 hours at $15 an hour.
More than a year of saving. 1.66 years of putting your entire income from this part time job into an account to pay tuition.
TUITION
Books will add another $4k plus to this. A gigantic scam of the education industry is to require a particular edition of a text book. For some reason a new edition always has different page numbers from other editions making them nearly useless for the current class, so you have to get a NEW book instead of saving a bit on a used one.
You're still going to starve to death in the street while your attending classes and fail because you don't have books and supplies because every penny you made went into tuition.
20 hours at $15 an hour is $15,600 a year. You lose $175 to income tax. $2,386.80 to FICA.
$13,038.20 left.
Considering that the average rent for a 1-bedroom in Talahassee is $1,100 a month... you're now short $161.80 for the year and you're still gonna starve!
But 2-bedrooms places are $1,200 so you get a roomie! Now you have $5,838.20 for food, clothes and transportation. That's $112.27 a week. $16.03 a day.
You are NOT saving up for tuition on a part time job unless you have someone else paying your bills for you.
Even so, it will take prodigious will power to do so.
To expect such will is unrealistic.
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ReplyDeleteYeah, I did the GI Bill and State of Illinois paying the tuition and fees for me. Still was in constant "broke mode" for all those years. Did work part time in the College of Engineering then in bars later... So, less concern about starving at that point :-) Just needed to motivation to leave that particular stop on the road... But yeah, do NOT miss that "college broke" thing...
ReplyDeleteAnd that is a major problem. There's no 'working my way through college' and 'living 5 people in one room' while 'eating at the school cafeteria' anymore. And the sad thing is, across the board at all schools, a degree is easier to get and the student learns less than 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteMy first college's entrance requirements were what is required (without advanced schooling) at the masters level at state colleges today. Basic science, math, language skills. That was at $75.00 a quarter hour in 1982.
Yet schools are far more expensive per tuition than should be adjusted for inflation. Same with textbooks.
Crazy.
Yet most trade schools are t
Higher education, these days, is an enormous scam IMO.
ReplyDeleteI also went to college using the GI Bill. That barely covered tuition and they were already doing the "need a new book every semester" scam back in the mid 70's. In a couple of classes the required textbook was written by the professor teaching the class and was a different textbook than the same class taught by someone else. I went to a community college the first two years to save some money and the credits were good at a major university. I went to the University of South Florida for the last 2.25 years. My mother was an Air Force widow with 3 kids living on a life insurance payout and whatever benefits a deceased captain got. She worked part time at the base hospital and shopped for groceries at the commissary. She remarried when I was a high school senior and I stayed with my parents during college so room and board was whatever I could afford to pay. I didn't work while at school except for a couple weekends a month mowing neighbors lawns but I did work at the phosphate mines during the summer (a pit gunner was a pretty cool job). It was a union job so pay was more than minimum wage, a bit more than $4/hour but a chunk came out of that for union dues. I had to work during my last summer because a required class was only available during summer semester. Money was tight enough that near the end I had to sell my high school class ring, the gun that wasn't a family heirloom and some collectables I had bought while stationed in Italy and a side trip to Greece. It's a good thing I had learned to fix my own car because a 10 year old Chevy required constant attention to the carburetor and distributor points. This was back when a college degree meant something and was required to get a job in a technical field. When I started looking for a job they were just starting the minority/woman/handicapped preference thing so it took a few months of mailing out resumes before I found a place. I think today a trade school and an apprenticeship would be the way to go. - Marv
ReplyDeleteIn essence, working a part time job covered everything but tuition and just barely even back when?
DeleteMaybe in the 1800s or early 1900s it was possible?
DeleteMy dad started college the late 1940s. He was just too young to be a WWII vet like his older brother, so no GI bill. He took off a year after high school to save up money for college. And he took another year off between his sophmore and junior years to work as well. He worked summers and did some part time work while in school as well. Even then I think he got some assistance from his parents. And this was at one of the least expensive state universities there was. Maybe it was possible to do college on a part time job back then... but even back then it was certainly not easy, and probably not realistic in 4 years. You'd either have to take breaks like my dad did, or lower numbers of credits per semester and working more hours to be able to do it.
I started college at the same university my dad went to in the mid 1980s. This was right at the time that college prices started to really climb. I had a much better than average part time (closer to full time) job than most, making significantly above the minimum at that time. I was able to take a normal credit load my first semester there. Then the old geezer who had been president of the University since I was in diapers retired. And the next guy who came in started raising the tuition the maximum the legislature would allow him to. . So every semester I'd take a few less credits and work a few more hours and in less than 3 years I was working full time and not going to school at all.