25 years old and deep in debt

[Ideologue]

Apparently, 18 million jobs pay $10/hr or less, 63 million pay $10-20, so we're looking at around 81 million jobs at $20/hr or under.

The Languishite GOPtards will say that's 63 million too many, dammit.

To which I would suggest they try to live on 40k a year without any form of governmental assistance.

I'm making it.

[The Brain]

There is only war.

[Syt]

On the topic of "putting yourself through college with work":

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-myth-of-working-your-way-through-college/359735/

[...]

MSU calculates tuition by the "credit hour," the term for the number of hours spent in a classroom per week. By this metric, which is used at many U.S. colleges and universities, a course that's worth three credit hours is a course that meets for three hours each week during the semester. If the semester is 15 weeks long, that adds up to 45 total hours of a student's time. The Reddit user quantified the rising cost of tuition by cost per credit hour:

This is interesting. A credit hour in 1979 at MSU was 24.50, adjusted for inflation that is 79.23 in today dollars. One credit hour today costs 428.75.

Follow-up comments compared the rising cost of academic credit at MSU to changes in the federal minimum wage. In 1979, when the minimum wage was $2.90, a hard-working student with a minimum-wage job could earn enough in one day (8.44 hours) to pay for one academic credit hour. If a standard course load for one semester consisted of maybe 12 credit hours, the semester's tuition could be covered by just over two weeks of full-time minimum wage work—or a month of part-time work. A summer spent scooping ice cream or flipping burgers could pay for an MSU education.

The cost of an MSU credit hour has multiplied since 1979. So has the federal minimum wage. But today, it takes 60 hours of minimum-wage work to pay off a single credit hour, which was priced at $428.75 for the fall semester.

His conclusion: "It's impossible to work your way through college nowadays."

According to the graph, the price of an MSU education began exceeding what could reasonably be earned with part-time, minimum-wage work around 1993. That's when a single MSU credit hour became worth more than 20 hours of wages. Imagine a 15-week semester with a course load of 12 credit hours. If each credit hour required 20 hours of minimum wage work, a student would have to work 16 hours a week to pay for school.

That's doable. But today the same student would have to work 48 hours a week at that minimum wage job to pay for his classes. 

This reality is not specific to MSU. Last week, Olson set out to analyze a more comprehensive data set: in-state tuition costs for all public 4-year universities in the U.S. from 1987 through 2010. This weekend he posted a new graph showing that the 1987-2010 national trend mirrors the 1979-2013 MSU trend. Instead of comparing minimum-wage hours to the price of a single credit hour for one semester, here Olson shows what it would take to pay for a whole year's tuition.

[...]

And this is only considering the cost of tuition, which is hardly an accurate representation of what students actually spend for college. According to the College Board, average room and board fees at public universities today exceed tuition costs by a little more than 100 percent. (For the current academic year, average tuition at 4-year public schools is $8,893, but with room and board, the total average cost comes to $18,391.)

[...]

[mongers]

Interesting article, Syt.

[garbon]

Even at my first part-time job, I was making above minimum wage...and in college my jobs during the school year were several dollars above minimum wage.

[alfred russel]

One credit hour today costs 428.75

We just need to find ways for students to earn $428.75 each evening, and sometimes more. That may not be possible for all students of course, but I think it can be done for about half of them.

[Ideologue]

Even at my first part-time job, I was making above minimum wage...and in college my jobs during the school year were several dollars above minimum wage.

I was going to say "Here comes Yi to claim that the actual number of people making minimum wage is barely distinguishable from statistical noise," but it seems that I was wrong.  Bravo.  Kuuuudos.

Anyway, it's a good thing housing, food, and gasoline are practically free.  Otherwise tying up 16 hours' worth of wages every week--or let's say 10, for that vast, eclipsing majority, who make well over the minimum wage!--would be really problematic.  Likewise, it's a stroke of luck that fulltime jobs are so plentiful and easy to obtain--and so willing to work with school schedules--due to our booming, frankly overheated, economy.

[garbon]

The statement was "It's impossible to work your way through college nowadays." on calculations from minimum wage earnings.

[Admiral Yi]

There are a huge number of things you can't do with a minimum wage job.

[CountDeMoney]

But what you can do is make extra cash on the side as a student, which as we all know is what the majority of minimum wage earners in America are doing.

Whether an inner-city single mother supporting herself or a senior citizen who needs the work for medical coverage is actively enrolled for the semester, well, that's between them and Admissions.

[Admiral Yi]

Great, let's raise the minimum wage for single mothers and senior citizens paying for medical care.  That should increase their hireability.

[CountDeMoney]

The minimum wage doesn't need to be raised.  That would collapse the economy.

[Admiral Yi]

500,000 more unemployed and a couple points added to the CPI hardly qualifies as "collapsing" the economy.

[CountDeMoney]

No, I'm pretty sure raising the minimum wage would result in the complete collapse of the American economic model as we know it, or there wouldn't be such ferocious opposition to it. 
You'd think that employers would embrace it, since it would give them an even greater excuse opportunity to eliminate jobs than usual.

[Admiral Yi]

You win.