Tuition has skyrocketed, but have universities changed that much? They act like they never have enough money, but yet... they have more than ever. What are the offering now for their 10x increase in tuition in 30 years?
> Any dorm built or renevated in the last 10-15 or so years will have semi-private bathrooms.
This is true for new construction, but generally speaking older dorm buildings are kept in use and have the exact same experience as ever. Generally the new construction or alternatively designed dorms are more expensive to rent.
> The dining options today are way better than what we had. I trudged down to the dorm cafeteria and ate whatever slop they were serving, high school cafeteria style. My son (at a small public university) has what amounts to a mall food court at school, and he can choose from burgers, pizza, wraps, vegetarian, Italian, Mexican, etc. every day.
Food court style offerings are common, but like a food court you have to pay for anything offered. Typically corporate food chains try to get their place in the court and will wine and dine school administration for the chance to have a captive audience. The cafeteria style food options are still available and are cheaper (yes this food is really awful slop). Worse is that some universities require purchasing some amount of food ahead of time, whether it be a prepaid card usable anywhere or some kind of meal plan for the cafeteria style dining, milking money out of folks who prefer to live off campus and/or make their own food (esp. if they have special dietary requirements).
> The libraries are more functional, the sports facilities are all updated, etc.
This is generally true. Equipment is usually fairly modern and there is staff available most of the time.
The dining options are also much more expensive.
$500 a day might not be all that much (or it could be quite a bit).
My favorite waitress used to eat at a facility like that, after graduation now she's stuck working at a similar facility. A bit too personal to ask, but I imagine its kinda a shock to the system for about 99% of the students.
Unless they think that they cannot possibly go through a reduction in their standard of living and borrow to keep up with what is, in their mind, "normal."
College used to be rare and ascetic. Now it's required and expensive. I don't think either of those are a good trend.
True, most English Lit grads work as waitresses/bartenders, but the few who become tenured college profs are the new landed gentry, paid well above what their peers would get in industry. Which flows uphill, such that only in academia could the boss of a liberal arts major be making more than $9/hr. Of course the system of teaching with adjuncts who are paid less than minimum wage and indentured servant TAs is cutting into that.
There was a time, when teaching didn't pay as well as private industry, but at least you got good benefits and summers off. Since then we got rid of private industry and boosted the pay and benefits in teaching beyond whatever private industry is left, if any.
From the Dept Pub Instruction 2012 report for the salaries for teachers (not admin, not staff) for the school district I live in which is almost perfectly coincident with the boundaries of the city, lowest pay was 24131, highest was 93313, and average was 61223 with an average years of employment in the district of 12.34 years and total years of experience of 13.66 years.
I can't get a straight answer on garbage man pay. I can find quotes between $20K and $60K depending on which political axe they're grinding. I believe the low end is part time / noob / disability and there's a cluster around upper 50s for the full timers who have a couple years in (so we can compare apples to apples, like the teachers with 12 years experience above). Some guys get stuck on overtime, especially around the holidays. So if your axe to grind is they're underpaid for a gross heavy labor job, they're only making in the $20s, but if your axe to grind is they're overpaid for gross heavy manual labor then they make about $60K.
Its hard to compare medians and means and there's lots of fuzzy math.