Pranks... BYU has a system of tunnels under the whole campus. If you know your
way around you can come up in any building. Most of it was locked down but I
knew of a set of metal shelves in the physics building that you could remove
the bottom shelf and get down into a pipe chase. It was fun running around in
the dark down there. Today they would probably throw me in jail.
I did this same thing in my high school.
From: Nate Burke
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2020 11:47 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
I was lucky enough to get out of College with No Debt, thanks to my Parents.
They were not wealthy, but were frugal their whole life. Deal was they would
pay for 4 years, anything more was on Me. Stayed on Campus for 2 summers that
I paid for out of pocket. I was making $15/hr back in the late 90's at Argonne
Labs. Almost 3 times what my friends with on campus jobs made. Smallish
Liberal arts school. ~4000 undergrad. We still live in the same city the
school is in. The Campus has not gotten any more property, as it's landlocked
in a historic district, but they've added more buildings to their existing
greenspace. Had a nephew that graduated from there a couple years ago. Just
seeing how his experience was different from mine was mind boggling over 15
years.
It was a huge deal for my gang to go out for a meal. Getting Pizza was a once
a month thing. You looked forward to those floor movie nights with free pizza.
The On campus cafe was burgers and fries served on paper plates.
Now enrollment is up to ~6000, multiple buildings on campus have coffee shops
in them. I'm not even sure you can get a burger on campus anymore, as all the
food locations have some variation of 'fresh' in the name. I'm pretty sure
that he was going out multiple time a week to upscale fast food places. That
seems to be the norm for most college kids now. I'm not sure where they are
getting all that pocket cash from, unless it's all on Credit cards.
I think the biggest sadness is the college pranks, since it's not about the
fun, it's about the one-up/twitter/youtube views that have the potential to
just be dangerous.
My parents would tell the story about the kid that took a cow up to the top
floor of the 5 story admin building one weekend. Or when they stole all the
legs off the tables in the cafeteria. I'd imagine something like that would
get you expelled now. I don't think we could have even pulled those off in the
90's.
On 10/12/2020 12:26 PM, Mark Radabaugh wrote:
Too much easy money out there for students.
It’s not a simple problem - how do you make higher education available for
those who don’t have the means to pay for it without inadvertently raising the
costs for everyone?
Visit any decent 4 year college. They are far closer to a country club than
to colleges from the 1980’s and before. Fantastic facilities - every type of
recreational activity or amenity you could possibly want. The amount spent on
buildings and facilities is astonishing. Yet they don’t actually spend all
that much money on faculty. Being a college professor, even with tenure, isn’t
all that lucrative.
The schools are competitive with each other in attracting students - and with
cheap money available there is little or no incentive for students to shop on
price. The schools are faced with the same competitive pressures as everyone
else - except to keep rates down. The end result is predictable.
Combine an easy (even predatory) money policy with a large middle class
population with easy access to credit and you get exactly what we have.
Giving away even more money by having taxpayers bail out the loan debt isn’t
a good answer and only increases the problems.
And we haven’t even started on the problems created by students graduating
with useless degrees with insane levels of debt and then figuring out they
can’t afford to keep living at the country club. What do you mean my
studio apartment doesn’t come fully furnished with a pool, masseuse, and a
barista? How the hell is anyone supposed to live like this?
Mark
On Oct 12, 2020, at 12:52 PM, Cameron Crum <[email protected]> wrote:
Universities know the government will give big loans to kids and they all
want to be on that gravy train. They raise tuition and just put it on the kids
to go get more money in the form of debt. Kids would be hard pressed to pay
tuition working their way through right now. Tuition costs have doubled
inflation and outpaced wages by 8x. My daughter just entered college and
through sheer luck, she ended up in Community College. She got into every big
school she applied to but after visiting them all, decided none of them were
for her. She really wanted to go to UT( Texas), but did not apply because her
teachers all told her she had to be top 7% to get accepted and she was only top
10%. I told her to apply, but she did not. So, as a result she decided in March
she would just move to Austin and go to ACC who has a transfer track program
into UT if you can keep a 3.7 GPA. She is taking the same classes as her
friends at UT (all online) but paying 1/5 the tuition. She is living in a
private dormitory across the street from UT campus with mostly UT kids, so
basically has the same "college" experience without the huge tuition bill, for
now. I couldn't be happier. She had a decent 529 for college but not enough for
all 4 years even at a state school. Now it might just last, especially if she
decides to stay at ACC for another year before transferring to UT. I'm hoping
she can get out without debt, but I'm guessing she'll have a little. I'm with
Mike Rowe on a lot of this. I never thought college was for everyone, and trade
schools are cheap in comparison, and you can be earning a good paycheck in a
lot less time.
On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 9:00 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote:
I started at $1.80 at the pizza joint. After a month or two I got a
raise to $2. I think all new employees got a quick performance review at which
they either got a 10% raise or got fired.
I had a summer job as a shipping clerk, I don’t remember what it paid.
First job after graduation in 1972 paid $10,920/year.
From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 6:53 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
Still , a fortune. I was making $2.50/hr in those years.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 11, 2020, at 4:53 PM, Robert <[email protected]> wrote:
I forgot to take all the taxes out of that for each summer. I netted
more like 4K for the summer..
On 10/11/20 3:49 PM, Robert wrote:
When I went to UCSC one quarter all up cost about $1.7K in 1975 This
year, just the tuition, room and board and mandatory health insurance is going
to cost you $36K _california resident_ I was able to work for $9.40/hour at a
gas station as a jr manager, opening and closing during the summer. 60 hours
weeks for 12 weeks. That was almost $7K for the summer, minus gas and some
small expenses while staying at my parents. Yes I was overpaid, pays to know
someone, I also opened, closed and did the books. But I don't care who you
know but joe blow isn't going to get a summer job that is going to come
anywhere close to $100K for summer or even year round work when you are in
college now. What's the difference? UC California turns students away by
the bushel. Instead of a system that focused on California High School
graduates, it's a system that focuses on attracting donors that can put names
on buildings. Slots are full from outside the state at huge financial cash
flow. Everyone else can go to a Jr College.
On 10/11/20 2:27 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Here’s one I don’t understand. Not pointing a finger, I genuinely
don’t understand. Student loan debt. Is that the huge issue that people say?
And if so, is that a new phenomenon? Why?
I assume my dad went to college on the GI Bill after WWII. I
worked 20 hours a week all through college making pizzas and burgers, and had a
coop job every third quarter or so until the coop jobs disappeared due to a
recession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1969%E2%80%931970
Plus my parents helped out. I don’t remember my friends in college
talking about student debt, but maybe they had it and it just wasn’t talked
about.
I can speculate some possible reasons for a student debt crisis now:
- Tuition has gone up
- Part time jobs and coop jobs unavailable or don’t pay enough
- Less financial assistance available
- Predatory for-profit schools
- Lots of kids who couldn’t find jobs in the Great Recession went
to school or pursued advanced degrees instead
None of these seem like adequate explanations. College is too
expensive, not sure how much it has gone up adjusted for inflation. You’d
think with online instruction and extensive use of low paid adjunct professors
they could keep costs down. Certainly dorms, food and other amenities are a
lot fancier than when I was in college, maybe those costs have gotten out of
hand. You’d also think state schools and especially community colleges would
be affordable options, Harvard and Yale aren’t the only places to get a good
education.
But if there’s genuinely a huge student debt crisis, what is
causing it, and how do we fix it? Is “free college for all” really the only
solution?
I understand with the pandemic, people out of work can’t pay their
student debts, but supposedly this problem predates the pandemic.
From: AF mailto:[email protected] On Behalf Of Bill Prince
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 3:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
Yah. Even though I'm a boomer, I think attributing the current
state of the economy entirely on boomers is missing the mark somewhat. There
are a whole raft of issues that are squeezing millenials like globalization and
extreme automation. You keep adding barriers, and getting or creating a good
paying job just gets more difficult. If all you can do is flip burgers at Micky
D's or pour coffee at Starbucks, maybe you need to think a bit more creatively.
bp<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>On 10/11/2020 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Obviously I’m prejudiced, but I don’t think this whole trope about
all the problems young people today face being the fault of the baby boomers
(and wishing they would die and stop hogging all the good jobs) is quite
accurate.
Yes we had a long recession starting in 2008 (but of course there
were recessions back in the 1970’s as well), but I saw a lot of parents dipping
into their 401K savings and taking out loans on their paid-off houses so their
adult children could live with them, or to pay for their kids to go to college
instead of being unemployed.
Baby boomer 401K plans were a big cushion for millennials and the
economy in general during the “Great Recession”. I think what will actually
hit the millennials is when the boomers do die, they won’t be inheriting as
much money because those retirement funds got drained. Also, don’t kid
yourself that 70 year old boomer greeting people at Walmart or bagging
groceries at Kroger is just continuing to work for the fun of it, or that a
millennial wanted that job anyway. As far as the “good” jobs, age
discrimination kicks in around age 50. I don’t think Google and Facebook have
a lot of boomers writing code. How many boomers does Elon Musk have designing
Teslas and SpaceX rockets?
Still a funny skit, but I run into millennials who totally blame
all their woes on boomers screwing their generation over. And the “why don’t
they die already” viewpoint spills over into Covid discussions. Lots of
anti-maskers say things like “if they don’t feel safe going out, they are free
to not go out”. Or there aren’t that many deaths if you ignore the old people
who were going to die anyway. People at least didn’t used to say stuff like
that out loud.
From: AF mailto:[email protected] On Behalf Of Robert
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 12:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
very apropos...
On 10/11/20 10:04 AM, [email protected] wrote:
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395
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