When I graduated from an all girls high school in 1953, it cost $15 per semester hour to attend the local state teachers college. If you lived at home, you could pay for that with baby sitting money. Strange as it may seem, only 10% of my class went on to college. Why was that? What happened in the old days when college was cheap?
Young women weren’t motivated to attend college in the hope of getting a better job. In those days, most girls got engaged to be married before they were 20. Why bother with college at all? And for those of us who scrimped and saved and slogged our way through college, it didn’t really pay off. A good secretary who learned to type and take shorthand in high school made as much as a teacher.
Girls who went on to college were accused of looking for an “MRS degree.” It was assumed they were only interested in finding a well educated husband, who could provide a better life than a truck driver. . And it must have worked. If you read the obituaries of octogenarians who were prominent in society, it often says they met their husbands while attending such and such university.
Back then, most women who did graduate and entered the work force got married in a couple of years, had kids, moved to the suburbs, and became stay at home wives. Their hard earned college degree wasn’t nearly as helpful as reading Dr. Spock.
The birth control pill in 1960 marked the beginning of the women’s liberation movement. “Good” girls didn’t have to get married in order to enjoy sex. And they didn’t have to have kids unless and until they were good and ready. Employers began hiring women to fill traditional male occupations., and paying them better salaries. Their college degrees paid off if they studied accounting, engineering, or medicine. As more and more women attended college, tuition and fees went up. That small teachers college in my home town became a State University. Enrollment multiplied five times over the years.
Now, I see the pendulum swinging the other way. A college degree is beginning to lose it’s luster. Enrollment is declining. With salaries rising for skilled trade jobs, and the $15 an hour wage looming on the horizon, it hardly seems worth it to pile up half a lifetime of student loan debt. https://livingwellafter80.com/why-some-bright-kids-drop-out-of-college/
And, let’s face it. We’re heading toward socialism. When health care and a college education are free, then there’s less incentive to spend four years of your life in a classroom when you could get a good skilled trade job, buy a house, and start a family before you’re thirty. As a matter of fact, waitresses and bartenders now make more than many college grads.