The cost of attending any UC school is $17,500 before living expenses. UMASS is about the same. UVM is about $19,000. Assuming a full-time job at $10 per hour and deductions for payroll and other taxes, it would take roughly one year of full-time work to cover just those costs. And you haven't got a penny to live on yet. As in...food. And this is assuming that 100% of your after-tax income goes to savings (unlikely).

So, what are students supposed to do? They can't go to college in Arkansas because they're out of state, and out of state tuition costs are generally pretty high.

IMO, living in an old van qualifies as "homeless." I suspect the law agrees with me. If your brother chose to do that, fine. But a major point of the article Dude linked to was that college costs force many students to be homeless, which I suspect was the case with your brother. So you've actually added evidence to the point, rather than refuted it. And living in a van in a place like New England is out of the question. Because...frostbite, hypothermia, death. Living in a van in Arizona or much of California is out of the question because...heat stroke, death.

And why should people have to live in a vehicle to get a college education, anyway? Why should they have to live without a phone (BTW, which plans cost $200 a month? Metro PCS has smartphones for free to $150, plus a 100% LTE/unlimited talk plan for $40 or $50 a month)? How will you get through college without a computer? Answer: you won't. It was already essentially impossible when I was doing a PhD in the mid-90s. And you need a reasonably new computer to run the software and other things you need for your classes.

Being frugal as a student is important. Being homeless and hungry (which affects a third of all students, including your brother) is way beyond that.


I think it's important to have a bit of sympathy for people who are doing their best in a system that works against their interests. Respectfully, your post came across as being kind of smug.

I agree with Dude that the current approach to education, where K-12 schools are starved, where state universities have seen their state funding plummet, and where all the liabilities and costs are passed on to students is doing very serious damage to this nation.


(Most PhD students get scholarships. If you're paying for a Ph.D., that's not a good sign.)




Last edited by Val; 04/06/18 08:48 PM.