[Alumni-chat] What will the BOT do?

[john_hevelin (bwotte at rexx.com)]

Hi, Rowan,

>>>b) The cost of living in urban centers has increased dramatically, and co-op pay is no longer able to cover cost of living in most situations.  While in my era we were able to actually save some cash on co-op and return to campus with startup money for the academic term, today, on average the co-op experience is a double whammy for students.  They pay tuition to be working, and then end up paying for the living costs of the job as well.
>>Again, I guess I don't understand.  The majority of co-op jobs I had paid minimum wage.  As a financial aid student, I was expected to cover all living costs out of that plus save at least two hundred dollars towards the study quarter.  I managed to do this.  Some co-op jobs paid much better than minimum wage, but these were usually in the sciences.  Many interesting jobs paid nothing because they were essentially volunteer -- excellent learning opportunities, very poor pay.  If you were on financial aid, you had to balance all these options, another learning experience.
>This one's pretty simple, John. Jobs were paying $5,000 per term, when they paid. Tuition was $7,000 per term or more. Sure, there was financial aid and loans and such, but when the starting point is $2,000 down?
Guess I still don't understand.  First, under the quarter system, I was only billed tuition for study quarters.  I never thought I was paying tuition for co-op quarters.  Second, there was never the expectation that you could cover a quarter's tuition through co-op job earnings.  The expectation was that you supported yourself (equivalent, I guess, to what you would pay in room and board during a study quarter) and, for financial aid students, save some money to contribute to the next study quarter expenses, a kind of "good faith" effort to show you were serious.

I realize that today's job market and reduced minimum wage make this more challenging than it might have been in the Sixties (although it wasn't easy then, trust me), but I also don't think the difficulties are insurmountable, especially in view of the advantages to be derived from working at different jobs in different places.  I think this is an area where creative approaches would yield major benefits.

John Hevelin '68