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Not all colleges are 35K a year.. and even in your time you were not going to work your way thru MIT or Yale on a minimum wage job
but nice try
At the time I was paying tuition at a State University of $650 a year. A private university was $2000 to $3000 a year and Ivy League was around $4000 tuition.
Working your way through college in the 1970s was relatively easy even with minimum wage jobs. Today, you are looking at debt regardless of how industrious you may be.
The point is that minimum wage has not kept up with the cost of living and Colleges (both public and private ) have escalated their costs
Bravo to your work ethic.
Too bad you stopped considering alternatives.
1. For a real-world perspective on the American ethic, find the Alan Shepard book, Scratch Beginnings, in which the author recounts his own social experiment, at age 24, starting out at the lowest rung of the economic ladder. The question: could he conquer poverty in one year at his best efforts?
2. He left his home with nothing but a tarp, sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, the clothes on his back, and $25. The went to Charleston, South Carolina a city where he had never been before, and where he knew nobody. He didnt use his college education as a resume, nor any family or other contacts.
3. The first night he finds the Crisis Ministries homeless shelter, and, next morning, begins working odd jobs. Within a few weeks, he gets a regular job with a moving company. He moonlights on weekends to make extra money.
4. He makes friends and contacts, and these help him to find jobs and housing Within five months, he gets a raise from the moving company to $10/ hour. And another, to $11/hour in less than nine months.
5. Progress was retarded by breaking his foot on the job, yet by three months he was able to move out of the homeless shelter and rent a room in a large house in an upscale part of town. (It was owned by a friend he met while working a second job on weekends.) Then, just a month later, he moved into a two-bedroom duplex with the cousin of one of his co-workers. It was a bit rundown, so the two of them spent a week-end making it like new. (His share was $325 because he took the master bedroom.)
6. After just ten months he was living in his own furnished apartment, with his own car, and he had $5,300 in savings.
a. The book also tells of other low-income people he met, and how they, also, would like a safety net second to their own work,
"Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream" [Paperback]
Adam W. Shepard (Author)
Stop cryin,' start tryin.'
Big deal.....I'm not impressed
I could have done the same thing when I was 24. At the time, I had a college education and business experience .........not to mention immense charm and stunning good looks
But I am not naive enough to think that just because I could have done it at 24 therefore every American could do the same