Agreed. Comparing the $160 early 1900s Yale tuition that that of today's Yale is a little ridiculous. Yale and the like were the only real universities in the country. It would be better to compare to a public University (assuming we're still talking about someone trying to pay their way through college, that seems to be the place they would be going to). You're not looking at $40k a year, you're looking at ~$7000 (http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html).

And going by his math to pay for it, at 12 hours a day, for 32 days, you're looking at 384 total hours of work to pay for a year's tuition. To pay for a public school in the same number of hours worked, you would have to be making roughly $18 an hour, or a yearly salary of ~$38k (pre-tax, but that's a different issue entirely). Turns out college education is going to be roughly the same cost as it was then, if you're going to a public school.