Hacker News Reader

Comment by glenra | Hacker News Reader

That chart assumes the only option available is to work minimum wage jobs. Which seems nuts, especially when one takes into consideration the possibility of working full-time during the summer at a real job in one's area of specialization. What you need to chart this is some measure of how much college students actually are earning over time, not a measure of the lowest wage it's legally permissible to pay them.

View on HN

CS people are probably in a somewhat unique position where that is somewhat possible. If you study something that isn't tied to a specific industry or where you need many years of training and certification to become useful that's not so tenable.

I can't speak to other times and places but in silicon valley in the late 1980s I went to a temp agency and looked for unskilled work during the summer - I don't think I ever came across any jobs that paid as low as minimum wage. One summer I was a "shipping clerk" (meaning: guy who gets stuff out of a warehouse and puts it in boxes) at Syva - that paid over twice the minimum. Another summer I did data entry for the Accounts Receivable department at Dialog - that also paid much more than the minimum, and required only rudimentary typing skills. And yes, naturally once I was a declared CS major I could intern at IBM, but even before that I didn't see a need to work minimum wage.

(Even McDonald's was paying more than minimum in my area.)

Yes one problem with minimum wage is that it is fixed across the country even though cost of living disparities are huge. The high cost of living in silicon valley pushes up wages even at the lower end, whereas in some rural areas it might even seem a bit high

For example in my hometown it is still possible to rent a flat with a friend for less than $400/month meaning single people can survive on very little

These easy opportunities aren't really available to my generation. :/ I was born in a poor rural area, and for a while the only job I could find actually paid less than state minimum wage. It's hard to pay rent and buy food on that little income, much less save up funds for an escape to somewhere with a better economy (which I eventually managed, but it took me 7 years).

> One summer [...paid] over twice the minimum.

Ok, so from the chart, on minimum wage you'd work 10 hours per credit, at twice the minimum wage you'd work 5 hours. For 2013 you'd work 60 hours at minimum wage or 30 hours at twice the minimum wage.

I'd say there's quite a difference between 5 and 30 hours either way?

That was actually my first thought as well, but came to an opposite conclusion: it's even harder now for students because there are no jobs above MW.

Today there are MW jobs, and there are middle-class 40/year jobs, but there not much in between. I'm 30 so I don't know for certain about the past, but the only higher than MW job I could find when in school 4 years ago was delivering pizza.

> there are no jobs above MW.

I'm not sure that the math works out. 4% of those with high school educations, but not a degree, work a minimum wage job. That works out to about 8M people. At the same time, there are ~14M people enrolled in college. So even if we assume every single one of those 8M minimum wage jobs are filled by people who are in college, that still leaves 6M people who are either unemployed or making more. And if we make that assumption, that also means everyone who is not enrolled in college and has a high school education is making more than minimum wage.

> What you need to chart this is some measure of how much college students actually are earning over time, not a measure of the lowest wage it's legally permissible to pay them.

That would only be useful if either a) we knew there were no students working minimum wage jobs or b) we were unconcerned with students unable to obtain higher paying jobs

I'm responding to the headline claim that it's allegedly impossible to work oneself through college. The corrected claim is that it's quite difficult to work through college on a minimum-wage job. But probably still possible for some if you're a CS major or an architectural major or any number of other majors. Basically, if your degree is one that promises to be lucrative or if you have any other valuable skills or expertise you can probably get SOME of the value of having a degree before you actually finish it by working in a degree-relevant field.

You need to have the money upfront to pay for the first two years of college, though. You can't use money you won't earn for another two years to pay a tuition bill that's due now.

At the amount I was getting paid in 2007, it would have taken me 33.3 years to save up for the first two years of in state public college.

I think what's relevant is the trend. You do have a good point, but it seems plausible to me that the same proportion of college students today are working minimum-wage jobs compared to 40 years ago, with the higher paying jobs breaking along the same rough percentages. It would be interesting to see the data on that though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com