Is ‘Boomer’ now a pejorative term?

[tmwiese55]

Well, for one, there is no way the higher ed. system is unchanged in 20 years. It's just impossible. It's unsustainable and the enrollments would dip to such a level that these places will collapse. The Ivys will be fine but the others will not be able to survive. Something drastic will happen, but who knows what that will be.

 

That may be true, but I don't think it will magically get cheap. Room and Board is expensive and from personal knowledge I know the typical college is in the red when it comes to residence life. They definitely aren't making money off people living on campus. ~$10k yearly tuition isn't that crazy in my opinion, but the $25k+ tuitions probably are not sustainable. Even at a cheap college you are talking $20k a year ($80k total) to go if you have to live on campus. If you only get basic federal loans that leaves $55k to find in the couch cushions. Just roughly speaking.

 

I am not even sure it can get cheaper. Is LSU going to demolish their water park? Are schools going to tear down the luxury living quarters? If people continue to fill these universities where is the motivation to change?

 

Spitballing here, not arguing, just throwing out ideas. If the loan systems weren't in place putting a glut of money into this industry to attend schools and all that, then people wouldn't be filling the universities and costs would have to go down? But, the problem with that is then the already wealthy people might have an even greater advantage that they're the only ones who can afford college and thus creating an even bigger wealth gap. Or, maybe it works well enough that the costs come down enough that normal people can afford in the bootstrap the 'boomer' in this thread was saying by just working hard while in college and maybe coming out with a bit of debt, not a mountain. Perhaps more people choose trade or tech type schools and that gap in the workforce is fixed. IDK

[nodakfan17]

While college may be more expensive than it once was, I’d argue that the internet has made it easier than ever to make informed decisions about career preparation. 20 years ago, most high school students were limited to what their parents knew about college (or the work force) and the pamphlets their guidance counselor had in their office.

[homer]

While college may be more expensive than it once was, I’d argue that the internet has made it easier than ever to make informed decisions about career preparation. 20 years ago, most high school students were limited to what their parents knew about college (or the work force) and the pamphlets their guidance counselor had in their office.

 

I'd say it was more like 30 years ago.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Two things the last few comments made me want to address. Part of the over-saturation problem with college degrees is that the post-high school alternatives are nowhere near what they were in the boomer world. Do people really understand that it used to be possible to own a home, raise kids, and have a stay-at-home wife on one guy's manufacturing salary? That was common. That's insane today. Those jobs either don't exist in some areas altogether or there are just not enough of them. Even then they do, the salary hasn't kept up with inflation. So then what happens? More people get degrees and there is increased competition for those jobs. At the middle and lower level fields, the salaries stagnate because there is no incentive to pay a high wage. There is a line of people that need the job. That is how you end up with college-educated waitresses.

 

The Internet and the knowledge economy has definitely helped some, but even that is really overstated IMO. My company is not hiring you without college. They're just not. They don't care if you've spent 500 hours on Coursera and are better than the guys they have. You won't get a chance to prove that because your resume is going right into the blackhole without college.

 

My point there is really that most people truly are still better off college and the debt, provided it is manageable. Graduating with a CPA and $40k to pay back sucks, but honestly you'll be fine.

[nodakfan17]

While college may be more expensive than it once was, I’d argue that the internet has made it easier than ever to make informed decisions about career preparation. 20 years ago, most high school students were limited to what their parents knew about college (or the work force) and the pamphlets their guidance counselor had in their office.

 

I'd say it was more like 30 years ago.

To be fair, most people in the 90s just used the internet to check eBay for Beanie Babies.

[nate82]

While college may be more expensive than it once was, I’d argue that the internet has made it easier than ever to make informed decisions about career preparation. 20 years ago, most high school students were limited to what their parents knew about college (or the work force) and the pamphlets their guidance counselor had in their office.

 

I'd say it was more like 30 years ago.

 

No I would say 20 years ago is accurate. Most of the communication and information was still in print as late as 2000. I remember studying up on degrees, schools and career during that time and the majority of the information was of the print variety.

 

Maybe I am remembering wrong but I don't remember much being online then at least not as much as there is now.

[tmwiese55]

I'd generally agree. I was just under 20 years ago and it was basically pamphlets. Websites of course existed for each school but the breadth of information out there compared to now isn't even close. Still, I think the main point is still the same.

[FVBrewerFan]

Get degrees for nothing, with those degrees get into power. Then demand degrees for most jobs (and kind of look down on people if they don't get degree). You're also in charge of the schools and then jack up the cost of said degrees (while also gouging us in taxes for education spending to pay for your own huge salaries and pensions). Set up a basically predatory loan system and rates for people to attend the school. Tell young people only way to make it in America is with the degree so just take the loan, it'll be fine. Then, when they get the degrees don't hire them for jobs because they don't have enough experience. All while running the country on a multi trillion dollar deficit every year that someone is going to have to pay for eventually. Stealing the money from our SS funds to pay for right now more than likely leaving the young people with no SS. Then bash millenials for thinking they got a raw deal.

 

Correct, they didn't get a raw deal with student loans. Degree for nothing? Ok. My parents couldn't afford tuition. Student lians weren't really a thing then. I worked part time 9 montns a year, full time during summer starting at 15. Then worked full time for two years after HS, and worked all through college. Sorry, no sympathy here.

 

You could do all that today and you would not have 1/4 of the balance paid. Sorry bud, you're just out of touch, and the reason this thread exists. They weren't a "thing" because you didn't need them.

 

My wife's hairdresser has an economics degree. You're so off on this one, it's just laughable. The premise of your argument, and calling it that is generous, is that 90% of the country took out student loans to study philosophy.

 

The government screwed the people, it's that simple. When the federal government guarantees the loans there is no incentive for the universities to manage costs of make it affordable. They can make it as expensive as a house, which it is, and it won't matter because people can get the loans. Fast forward a few years and you have a secretary of toilet paper making $160k. It's predatory, as someone else said.

 

Not true. It's impossible for me to be out of touch because I recently went through this whole process with my millennials. Friend of my daughter went to UW-Whitewater and recently graduated with a degree in accounting. He paid for it 100% on his own. I don't know if he had any $1,000 scholarships here and there, maybe he Stafford loan everyone gets. So it's just factually wrong to say it can't be done.

 

I know of others who went to a two year UW school to take are of general studies classes and lived at home. Much cheaper classes, and 0 for room and board. To be fair, I'm only familiar with WI schools, but in WI it's absolutely possible to get a degree without running up student loans.

 

Also, I don't know where I ever said 90% of loans taken out are for philosophy degrees. But these liberal arts degrees aren't an insignificant number. Look at Lawrence, you have thousands of students at that one liberal arts college alone. And if that's what you want to do, great, just don't complain how you have $80,000 in loans.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Graduated high school in '05 and there was really nothing even close to what is out there now at the time. The push in my neighborhood/school was 100% go to college or you're a bum. There was one kid that did a plumbing apprenticeship and a two or three who joined the military and the consensus among everyone was that they were peasant class idiots.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Not true. It's impossible for me to be out of touch because I recently went through this whole process with my millennials. Friend of my daughter went to UW-Whitewater and recently graduated with a degree in accounting. He paid for it 100% on his own. I don't know if he had any $1,000 scholarships here and there, maybe he Stafford loan everyone gets. So it's just factually wrong to say it can't be done.

 

I know of others who went to a two year UW school to take are of general studies classes and lived at home. Much cheaper classes, and 0 for room and board. To be fair, I'm only familiar with WI schools, but in WI it's absolutely possible to get a degree without running up student loans.

 

Also, I don't know where I ever said 90% of loans taken out are for philosophy degrees. But these liberal arts degrees aren't an insignificant number. Look at Lawrence, you have thousands of students at that one liberal arts college alone. And if that's what you want to do, great, just don't complain how you have $80,000 in loans.

 

I usually still call BS when I hear stories like this. There are details being left out of the story in 99% of cases. They are usually things so normal to these classes of people that they don't even think of them as advantages. Do the parents drive in every other week and take them grocery shopping? Did they gift them an old Honda Civic with 180k miles on it, and pay the insurance so they could commute to a waitressing job in Janesville and make 2x what a campus job pays? Do they still cover their cell phone bill? When the dorm closes, do they go home for a month and work while living rent-free with mom and dad?

 

You may think that these are 95% of the situations and I took advantage of several of the things I just listed. But there are people, lots and lots of people, who don't have these things offered to them. Often not having one available snowballs into another. You just listed living at home like that is something everyone can do. There isn't a quality college within commuting distance of everybody's house and in some cases that means living 2-4 more years with drug addicts or people who actually kick you out when you turn 18.

 

I'm not going to argue that some people can do more to help themselves out, but this idea that people are taking on large loans because they are lazy or stupid is just overly simplifying a complicated thing and not an accurate depiction of reality.

[homer]

Good discussion so far. Let's make sure to steer clear of politics.

[nate82]

One general comment I don't think people in WI know how good they have it in terms of options for college. Compared to other states like AZ where you basically have about 4 choices to go to a major school while in WI there are at least 6 choices that you can pick from and if you choose the UW system everything transfers as if they were taken at UW-Madison. So if you wanted to save money and graduate from UW-Madison you could take the first 2 or 3-years at UW-Whitewater, UW-Parkside, UW-Stout, UW-whatever and come out with only 1 or 2-years of expensive tuition.

 

I haven't looked this up but I believe the UW system is probably the most affordable college system in the country.

[MrTPlush]

UW-Madison isn’t even expensive, it is dirt cheap for that kind of education. I think the average cost for a public university in Illinois is pushing $15k or so (minimum $13k). Madison is in the 11k range and the UW system is as low as $8k.

 

Obviously there are other assorted costs, but the Wisconsin system is cheap. I don’t think it is Top 10...but fairly close.

[homer]

"Cheap" is relative obviously and compared to schools of similar standing, UW is less expensive. Back in the day when tuition was about $1200 a semester, you could get out of school with hardly any debt at all with a summer job and maybe working part-time during school. Had tuition simply matched inflation the last 30 years you'd be looking at like $2130 a semester instead of the $5350 or whatever it is this year. I don't claim to know all the reasons why it's so much more expensive but to me it used to be very affordable and now it isn't given that wages have not risen at the same rate as tuition.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

I went to Whitewater starting in 1991. I can remember the tuition with room and meal plan was 2,000 a semester, and books were a couple hundred extra. I took out a Stafford loan.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Those conversations are hard to quantify because the state school system has to be priced for the state since that is where most people are coming from. WI is not really a high-income state and the COL in the midwest in general is very low compared to the country, so the tuition is naturally going to be lower there than a lot of places. I do agree though that the selection of satellite schools is very good.

[LouisEly]

I went to Whitewater starting in 1991. I can remember the tuition with room and meal plan was 2,000 a semester, and books were a couple hundred extra. I took out a Stafford loan.

Dude... what dorm and floor? I was Wellers, 3rd floor. Do we know each other??

[LouisEly]

Lots of good points being made on all sides in this thread. My $0.02:

 

1) Everybody's frame of reference is their own personal experience, which is going to be different for many people.

 

B) My frame of reference is that I went to a high school that had no advance placement courses, no honors classes, and my class had a dropout rate of almost 25%. And no internet. How the hell was I supposed to compete for scholarships based on ACT scores? My family didn't have a lot of money, but I knew that the state of WI had a program where if you finished in the top 1% of your class you could go to any state school tuition-free. I busted my ass in high school - and took a lot of crap from people who resented me doing well, and because of no honors classes I had to sit in the same classes with them all damn day - and got that scholarship. I was making six figures by the age of 31. I made a lot of sacrifices to get there, including moving to places where I knew nobody. I forced myself to get better. I forced myself to understand finance and investing (and because of that, I knew the recession of 2008 was coming back in 2006.) If people complain about their situation, the first questions I ask are what sacrifices have you made and what are you doing to educate yourself to the reality of the world? If the answers are anywhere close to "not much", you can guess how much sympathy I have.

 

C) Every generation has been sold a bill of goods. For Millennials, it's student loans. For Boomers, it's that pensions and Social Security would be there to take care of them and that they could life a decent life with a decent wage and raise a family. While Millennials have no money, Boomers have been screwed out of billions of it by investment scams, telephone/internet scams, companies/pensions being wiped out, and the recessions of the 70's, early 2000's, and late 2000's. Boomers put everything into their home, and then either lost it to a recession or divorce. Speaking of divorce, Gen X's bill of goods was the Brady Bunch. Who the hell grew up in a house like that? We were lucky to live with two parents (who weren't yelling at each other), lucky to come home from school to one, and lucky not be held as barter between both of them. Oh, and many of our fathers came home from Vietnam - or lost friends there - and took that frustration out on us, just as Boomer's parents who served in WWII took it out on them.

 

D) As to why college is much more expensive now, the official line from UW-Madison is that funding from the state has drastically decreased over the last 20 years. Funding from the state used to cover most of tuition; now it only covers maybe 1/4th, if that. Most of UW's funding - according to them - is privately generated, and UW-Madison is very close to being able to qualify as a private school. According to them.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

I went to Whitewater starting in 1991. I can remember the tuition with room and meal plan was 2,000 a semester, and books were a couple hundred extra. I took out a Stafford loan.

Dude... what dorm and floor? I was Wellers, 3rd floor. Do we know each other??

 

I don't think so. Clem

[MrTPlush]

This thread was about to be WOAH SOLVVD if you guys knew each other.

[nodakfan17]

One general comment I don't think people in WI know how good they have it in terms of options for college. Compared to other states like AZ where you basically have about 4 choices to go to a major school while in WI there are at least 6 choices that you can pick from and if you choose the UW system everything transfers as if they were taken at UW-Madison.

Wisconsin probably ranks up there in terms of affordability and options, but I’ve always been envious of students from Minnesota who enjoy reciprocity agreements with Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and even Manitoba.

[NeedMoreFans]

I think people overestimate the number of boomers that went to college. Many could still get good-paying low-skilled jobs right out of high school through the 1960s and early 1970s when most boomers were coming of age. Many boomers don't understand how the current generations (Millenials and Gen Z) simply can't do the same thing they did for a variety of reasons. Many of those that did go to college can't fathom how a student can't simply pay for their tuition by working through college.

[MrTPlush]

I’d venture to say the expectations for college are a lot different too. I’d guess back when less went to college the degree alone was probably enough to land a job easily. Now the expectation is for everyone to go to college which then means a lot of supply compared to the demand. Now grades can be important or even essential and internships are quickly becoming a need. Those two things don’t leave a lot of free time to have a job while in school.

 

I knew many people that went into Sport Management which continues to be a pathetically outdated industry that insists on free labor via interns (usually a comical stipend is offered). Internships are often required to graduate in that major. So you are essentially paying to work.

[jerichoholicninja]

Some random points to add:

 

My senior year of college I decided to live at home and make the hour-ish commute instead. I set my schedule so I only had classes 3 days a week. With the scholarships the school gave me and not having to pay for room or a meal plan, it cost me less to go to that private school than the local two-year UW school. Private schools throw gobs of money at kids to go there and can make it quite (relatively speaking) affordable.

 

After I graduated it was quite a few years before I could find any sort of related employment. It caused quite a rift between me and my parents (boomers) as they assumed I just wasn't trying. My mom went to Bellin College of Nursing decades ago and graduated with the equivalent of a certificate in nursing. The day after graduation she went to a local hospital just to ask if they had any openings. She was hired on the spot and worked that night. She retired a couple years ago after working her whole life at that same job. No way she could to relate to or understand anything I was going through.

 

I worked at a high school for a couple years and being there really opened my eyes to how ridiculous it is that we are putting such pressure on 16-18 year old kids to figure out their lives at that age. Not that they shouldn't be thinking about and planning it but a 4 year school right after high school shouldn't even be a consideration for all but a very few kids. Take a few Gen Ed classes at a local college or online and try to get a job of any kind in some sort of area that you're interested in to find out if you actually want to do it before dropping 100 grand and wasting 4 or 5 years of your life on something you might hate.

[young guns]

After I graduated it was quite a few years before I could find any sort of related employment. It caused quite a rift between me and my parents (boomers) as they assumed I just wasn't trying.

I had a similar experience. When I graduated college, I expected it would be fairly easy to find a job with my degree, but there was so much competition and I didnt really stand out so it was hard. I eventually got a job in a similar field to try and gain experience and was living with my dad and step mom, because I was still only making barely above minimum wage. I ended up losing that job, and took it as an opportunity to try again to get my "dream job". At first they were understanding and helpful, but they didnt seem to understand how long the application/interview processes were going to take. They would tell me all I needed to do was "pound the pavement" and just get out there and talk to people. Tensions rose and they threatened to cut off the internet, which is what I needed to put in applications and look for jobs, and eventually gave me a deadline to get a job or be kicked out. I remember one job they told me about, the interview processes would finish 4 months after their deadline.

 

Final result is I have a job, but it doesnt use my degree at all. I'm still trying to pay off my loans 12 years after graduation that is hampering my financial flexibility, but at least it didnt ruin our relationships.