It is unlikely the average individual will work more than forty hours
Unless you were only working for 10 hours at your course, this is false. You could have a 40 hour per week job plus the 30 hour per week job at night. You were working anyway.
Minimum wage is actually $10/hr. here, so that skews things slightly, but let's assume $20K per year anyway since you mentioned it. It's been a while since I've done the math, so I was actually off by a bit. It turns out to be about $108K by the time you graduate given the current state of things.
However, if we assume you live to be 80, it actually works out to be about $640,000+ that you lost out on by not working for those four years.
In your case, you are definitely ahead, but can the average student claim the same? I'm not confident that they can. More importantly, were you really stuck at $20K for the rest of your life? If you had the chops to go to college, it seems like you probably had the chops to find yourself in better standing anyway. The first four years of my career didn't pay much more, but I leveraged that experience to move to a six figure income soon after.
Unless you were only working for 10 hours at your course, this is false. You could have a 40 hour per week job plus the 30 hour per week job at night. You were working anyway.
Minimum wage is actually $10/hr. here, so that skews things slightly, but let's assume $20K per year anyway since you mentioned it. It's been a while since I've done the math, so I was actually off by a bit. It turns out to be about $108K by the time you graduate given the current state of things.
However, if we assume you live to be 80, it actually works out to be about $640,000+ that you lost out on by not working for those four years.
In your case, you are definitely ahead, but can the average student claim the same? I'm not confident that they can. More importantly, were you really stuck at $20K for the rest of your life? If you had the chops to go to college, it seems like you probably had the chops to find yourself in better standing anyway. The first four years of my career didn't pay much more, but I leveraged that experience to move to a six figure income soon after.