Easy Sunday: College costs, then and now
Starting this fall, Harvard University students with family incomes of $200,000 and under will have their tuition covered.
The previous cutoff was family income of $85,000.
Current Harvard tuition: $ 59,076
Books and supplies: $ 1,000
Room and board: $ 20,374
Health plan and other services $ 5,794
TOTAL $ 86,244
In 1967-1971 college cost me about $5,000 a year, all in, including travel from Medford to Boston.
Tuition my first year was $1,800 a year. It grew to $2,000 a year in my senior year, as illustrated in the photo above.
College is about 17 times as expensive now as it was for me 58 years ago. That is about two and a half times the rate of general inflation over that period, which is a multiple of seven. With about $1,000/year help from my parents, plus summer jobs fighting forest fires, plus a melon crop, plus work-study jobs during the school year, I got through four years without taking on debt. The $1,000/year from my parents was a sacrifice for them. My father was an elementary school principal and my mother was a secretary at the Bureau of Land management. That $1,000/year was about seven percent of their pretax income. Notice the $350 credit in the college bill. That scholarship was an amount slightly greater than my cost for board. The dollar amount seems small now, but it was large in relation to costs. It was essential to my being able to attend.
The income a young man could earn then was far greater in relation to college costs than it is today. My work-study job cleaning dorm rooms and checking out books at the main research library paid $2.00/hour, rising to $2.20/hour my senior year. That meant that 909 hours at that job would have been sufficient to pay my tuition. That job checking out books exists today, and it pays $15/hour. The ratio of work-to-costs has changed dramatically; 909 hours of that work today would be $13,635, less than a quarter of the tuition cost.
A few things are less expensive now. A 15-minute phone call home to Oregon during late night hours used to cost me $3.50 -- or almost two hours of work. Now better-quality calls, with video, are free. Cross-country air travel was far more expensive in 1970, when compared to college costs. Flying "student standby," which meant half-price if there were unsold seats -- which I found were always available -- meant each one-way trip across the country was about $100, equal to about 5 percent of my tuition. (I dressed up to fly in a coat and tie.) Today Expedia shows a cross-country flight, Boston to Medford, as might be booked by a student flying home for the summer at the end of May this year, would be $157 -- incredibly cheap! -- or about a quarter of one percent of the tuition cost.
Harvard was the most expensive college in America back then. Now many private schools are more expensive. Harvard gets criticized for being "too rich," but I am happy it has its endowment and can put it to good use. If I were going to college now, with parents doing the same jobs as they had back in 1970, college would be tuition-free. If I had not had the melon crop as the second summer job, I could not have swung it.
Below are the kind of melons I grew and sold at Blunt's Ranch Market on Highway 99 south of Medford, and at Sherm's Thunderbird Market on West Main Street in Medford.
In May 1967, I was a bundle of nerves awaiting the National Merit Scholarship test results. I had gotten into Harvard but knew it would be a financial burden to my parents. My Dad worked for Allstate Insurance and made good money, but we were not wealthy. The results came in, and I was named a National Merit Scholar, a sponsored Allstate Merit Scholar, one of two in the country. I was overjoyed. I could pay my way. Not so fast, buddy! An advisory board deemed that my father made too much money, limiting my stipend to $1,000 yearly. Not, as you pointed out. Peter, a paltry sum, but not what I had hoped for or expected. Allstate got lots of publicity parading the two of us, and I'm positive they wouldn't have noticed a higher payout. But rules were rules!
Like you, I worked during my undergraduate years - selling firewood, teaching bartending, washing dishes, and working at faculty parties. I even got to open 150 bottles of champagne at a Van Cliburn concert at Symphony Hall. Van (he insisted I call him that) was the tallest person there, and I was the second tallest. He was more comfortable talking to me than mingling with hoi polloi. At school, money was tight, and I rarely ate outside the dorm and could not join the social and cultural clubs that appealed to me. In the summer, I worked in a sweltering valve assembly operation in Long Beach, California. I don't begrudge the current crop of freshmen their largesse, just as I don't mind seeing students get the debt relief that my wife and I didn't. We paid off our last college and graduate school student loans in 1984. We didn't miss that 18 percent interest rate! I learned and gained a tremendous amount from college, and I think it is vital for those who can also find value there. However, its cost is so out of line with average family capabilities that it will (or now is) solely for the highest income levels. That is areal shame.
Kudos to Harvard for this financial help. As most of your readers, I would guess, I worked through college, too; and medical school--from bucking hay and putting up tobacco, to construction to night-watchman to short-order cook to teaching assistant, to night coverage in a tiny hospital, among other jobs--and some support from the National Science Foundation. These, plus some student loans and very lean diets, got me through, all at state schools with what seem now to be absurdly low tuition and room-and-board. As I recall, Purdue's annual fees plus room and board (at the cheapest housing, State Street Court) in 1964 cost just under $1200. Minimum wage had just increased to $1.15/hr, but I had been bucking hay at 75 cents.
I know that the increased costs have outpaced the wages of the types of jobs I held. i believe that as a nation, we ought to fully fund college and trade schools for students who demonstrate diligence and progress. (I'd like universal national service, too. And a pony.)