Workers have to work for a longer period of time in order to afford University Tuition than they used to in 1980. The trend is hardest on minimum wage workers who have to work 32.24 weeks of full-time work in 2020 to afford tuition, compared to 5.95 weeks of full-time work in 1980. This ignores taxes and assumes all money earned is put toward tuition.

Since 1980 the price of a Year’s University Tuition has increased by 282% when adjusted for inflation.

Wages have gone up nominally, but not as much when accounting for inflation. The minimum wage has decreased since 1980 after adjusting for inflation.

Sources:

Visualized on boomerchecker.com

Edit:

  • Fixed an error when converting Median and Top 5% from annual to weekly. The time to save for those two brackets rose as a result.
  • Added wage data for the different wage brackets for reference.
  • @just_ducky_in_NH
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    31 year ago

    I live in New Hampshire, where annual in-state tuition is $15,520. Now I feel REALLY bad.

    • @AngryCommieKender
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      1 year ago

      $8,192 for in state at University of California, and we aren’t the cheapest. IIRC that is Kansas or Missouri.