Explain This To Me Like I'm A Complete Idiot, Part 15: No Millennial Left Behind?

[1939]

12. Some perspective

I am quite a bit older than most here (1939) and I went to college 1957-1961. Factors other than inflation have dramatically increased college costs.

Most of the married faculty lived in on-campus faculty housing and the bachelor faculty lived in a section of the student dorms. Non-tenured assistant professors in the "arts" departments made about $3500 a year (graduating engineers were getting offers from 5K-7K a year). Faculty were also expected to perform a lot of unpaid work for the school like assistant coaching, being timers and judges for athletic events, chaperones for formal dances, and a lot of one on one counseling (when they were not in class, they were expected to be in their offices and available).

Staff and faculty "productivity" has gone way down since then. A lot of the non-teaching staff (and some of the teaching staff) performed multiple jobs and the administrative offices were limited and austere. The Director of Admissions was also an English prof. The Dean of the faculty taught courses. Academic Departments heads also had a teaching load. Most faculty taught 15-18 credits while department heads were expected to tech 9-12 credits.

Textbooks were smaller (usually about 5" x 8" x 1", continued over more courses, and were packed with info. I paid $8.50 new for my surveying textbook which took me through two semesters of surveying and one semester of mapping (I still have it). Textbooks now re huge (9" x 12" x 3&quot , are only good for one semester, contain an awful lot of white space, and get changed from one year to the next so that they cannot be resold.

I visited my granddaughter in college and she took me to the dining hall which was cafeteria style. There must have been a dozen choices with ethnic food areas, grill areas, and health food areas. When i was in college, we ate family style and each table for eight would get a pot of beef stew, a bowl of canned green beans, a plate of bread, and a bowl of pudding (it varied from night to night, but that was typical).