Virginia Foxx Demonstrates the Limited Value of a UNC Education
Virginia Foxx is one of those people we tend to ignore, because Virginia Foxx tends to say stupid things so frequently that we would need to create a spinoff blog to deal with her, along with spinoff blogs for Louie Gohmert, Allen West, and half the House Republican Caucus.
But every so often, Virginia Foxx catches our attention despite ourselves, usually because we can’t find an Existential Cat Video to distract us. And so it was that while speaking on Friday to G. Gordon Liddy — Remember, kids, don’t buy books from crooks! — Virginia Foxx dropped this well-polished turd:
I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money… I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that.
Virginia Foxx, in case you were wondering, is 68. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1968. If you’re a North Carolina resident, as she was, UNC will charge you $7,008 this fall for annual tuition and fees. If you’re from out of state, it’s a cool $26,834.
Of course, the price of attending college is a lot more than what you feed the bursar. If you plan on enjoying extracurricular activities like eating and sleeping, UNC recommends that resident students like Virginia Foxx budget $20,660 a year for the full college experience. And if you’re not a native Tar Heel, set aside $41,140.
Say, did UNC teach math in 1968? Because if you multiply those amounts over four years — never mind expected tuition increases — you get $82,640 for residents and $164,560 for nonresidents. Which is amazingly similar to the $80,000 and $200,000 of student debt that Virginia Foxx has no tolerance for!
“There’s no reason for that,” says Virginia Foxx. And we agree! But you’ll have to take that up with the North Carolina legislature, which sets tuition. Perhaps Virginia Foxx knows somebody there, since she served in the state senate from 1994 to 2004 — and we’ll bet she never voted to raise tuition during her time there.
But surely, like Virginia Foxx, an enterprising student could work her way through UNC today. And at North Carolina’s $7.25 minimum wage, you could earn $15,080 a year!
Presuming you work forty hours a week, of course. With no vacations. And not counting taxes.
More likely, you’d be working twenty hours a week. And if you did that for fifty-two weeks straight, you’d pocket — again, before taxes — $6406.40. Which is less than half the full-time amount, because North Carolina has a special college-student minimum wage of $6.16, which only puts you in the hole $14,253.60 for each year of attending UNC.
So how did Virginia Foxx do it?
We’ll tell you how we did it. We attended the University of Oregon — which, like UNC, is a member of the Association of American Universities, which only fellow AAU members give a shit about — from 1977 to 1981. Resident tuition was $675 a year.
This year it’s $8,789.
And while we can’t find UNC tuition for 1968, we’ll take a wild guess that it’s also increased more than ten times since Virginia Foxx graduated.
On the other hand, if our 1977 annual UO tuition increased with inflation, it would cost $2,555 today. You can afford $2,555 a year without mortgaging your life, can’t you? Of course you can. We certainly could. And so could Virginia Foxx.
These numbers aren’t difficult to calculate. And anyone with a familiarity of how states have been increasingly shortchanging their public universities for decades — like us, like Virginia Foxx — knows damn well why student loans have skyrocketed to make up the difference.
That Virginia Foxx apparently doesn’t understand these things can have only one explanation: UNC gave her a shitty education.
You Tar Heels should be ashamed of yourselves.
Silly nojo, Virginia just doesn’t want the kids of her state to pay all that money so they can become snobby liberals who will want to gay marry and have abortions every month.
Of course the tuition’s a lot more if you earn a professional degree like lawyuh or doctuh or inginear.
I do have sympathy for the younger kids. All that debt and then try to get a job when you have a lot of unemployed experienced guys like me around. Good luck with that.
FYI, a furriner inginear student tuition to Canada City at my Alma Mater is around $23K. 9.5k for a Canada City dweller… hmmm, I’m thinking inginears are getting a bit fucked over especially when an Art/Sci degree is worth 5.5k a year and furriners pay 18K–based on earning “potential” obviously. Of course, spots are limited.
Tuition at UCLA when I started was around $70 per quarter. Not per unit, per quarter. Law school was a few hundred bucks a year. One could, and I did, work one’s way through both with low-paid on-campus jobs without racking up a big pile o’debt. UCLA Law tuition is now around $40K per year, and the job market is a disaster. I feel sorry for these kids.
Law school tuition was $1600 a semester 20 years ago. Son of RML’s fucking day care cost more than that a few years later. Including everything (rent, beer, nachos, books, tuition, etc) New Mexico is about $20,000 a year now for undergrads.
She’s a fucking idiot – pushed the death panel idea and other stupid shit. I’d ask what sort of person votes for morons like her, but sadly I know.
@Dodgerblue: i’ve been able to watch every dodger game so far. but i have to start ponying up $40/month for the rest of the season. right now it’s worth it, especially with vin back. did anybody listen to his jackie robinson stories yesterday?
@jwmcsame: Giants’ season DRT* with the Beard out for the year?
* Dead Right There
@redmanlaw: Ahem. It’s mid-April. Giants aren’t dead yet.
@SanFranLefty: The Battle of Cy Young Winners didn’t turn out well for your boys last night.
A reader who doesn’t want to go through Commenter Registration Hell emails:
It appears that the year Ms. Foxx enrolled, her tuition was $150 per year. With a minimum wage of $1 at the time she enrolled, it doesn’t seem to be a difficult prospect to pay tuition via working part time.
http://blueandwhitemag.com/issues/volume-14-issue-3-december-2011/cutting-ties-with-history/
@nojo:
Just confirms that Foxx is an oblivious dumbass who should be tying an onion to her belt for it was the style at the time.
I go into something of a brief fugue state when I allow my mind to drift towards the cost of the grad program at my highly respected, yet non-Ivy, second-tier school, as well as my future lifetime of indentured student loan servitude.
Occasionally, someone will ask how much my membership costs at the University’s gym, and I just say “it’s a bargain at only $20,500 a year!”
@ManchuCandidate: Her car gets four hogs to the horsehead, and that’s the way she likes it.
Let’s roll some more numbers:
$1 minimum wage in 1961 =$ 7.67 today.
$150 annual tuition in 1961 = $1,150.80 today.
Next time you enroll at UNC, ask for the 1961 Deal. Tell them Virginia Foxx sent you.
@nojo:
FYI, a course I took for Project management set me back $1200 and it’s not even a full year course but over a week.
If tuition cost like that I would be back in school taking Animal Husbandry or Gunsmithing… wait, that’s ICS/U of Phoenix. I’d be taking something.
@¡Andrew!:
5 bees for a quarter!
@ManchuCandidate: “You never know what you’re capable of. I never thought I could shoot down a German plane, but last year I proved myself wrong.”
@ManchuCandidate: If tuition was relatively this expensive in 1977, I’d head straight for Lane Community College and never look back.
Okay, maybe I could deal with a two-year tuition loan of $16,000 or so to finish at the UO. That makes it a (cheap) new car, which I can wrap my head around. Much more than that, and I’m consulting my options.
@nojo: Grad school at UT/Austin in the late 80s cost something like $3,000 a semester for out of staters, $300 for Texans. Compared with the other schools I was looking at, it was a bargain.
After a semester I had a TA gig which waved the out of state tag, plus paid me a stipend which, coupled with my bookstore clerk job, pretty much covered everything up to and including beer, four to five live bands a week, breakfast tacos and the occasional burger at Dirty’s.
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! Sen. sENEMA has a career ahead of her in giving designer psychedelic enemas to trust-fund…
MANCHUCANDIDATE • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: She thought three's company. Nope.
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! Gawd hates SIN, specifically Kyrsten SINema.
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! So long, Senatard Glitter-trash. I hope she knows how much everyone H8s her :0)
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! The racist kleptocratic MSM is really gonna have to crank up the bread and circuses now that their…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: Ted Kazinski Sec of Interior Only the DEAD are extreme enough to serve in DONNIE…
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @FlyingChainSaw: Department of Health & Human Services: Charles Manson Defense Secretary:…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @¡Andrew!: Right, the administration's all star line up: Pres: Trump VP: Ted Kaczynski…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! @FlyingChainSaw: Actually, FDLE would be the first to admit it. The state banks on it with 'sue me…
¡ANDREW! • TRUMP: MACHINE GUNNING ORPHANAGES AND CONVENTS BY ME IS CONSTITUTIONAL AND SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME ERECT WITHOUT PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE! I cannot wait for the Republinazi MAGAt trash to DEMAND that $hitler be allowed to be president…