When I attended the University of Washington, a state supported university, in 1949 to 1952, I paid about $53.00 per quarter -- $159.00 per year – in tuition. Books and supplies ran about $20.00 or $25.00 per quarter, or an additional $60.00 to $75.00 per year.

I went three quarters per year and worked during the summers.

When I returned to the U. of W. in 1956 to attend the School of Music, tuition had gone up to around $300.00 per year. Books and supplies were a bit more expensive than in the early Fifties. And then there was the cost of the voice and guitar lessons I was taking on the outside (at the time, the U. of W. School of Music didn't have a guitar department like they do now--I may have kicked the door open a bit when I was there--so I took lessons from Bud Hern and Bob Flanary, both classic guitarists;   and I felt my voice teachers, Edna Bianchi and George Hotchkiss Street, were better for my purposes than the U. of W. staff voice teachers).

When I went to the Cornish College of the Arts in the early 1960s, tuition there was around $500.00 a year. Cornish is a privately run school, no state subsidies, but the music instruction was great! It was more like a conservatory than a university music department.

At both the U-Dubya and Cornish, I worked my way through school, paid my own tuition as I went, and emerged debt free.

I just looked up the current BASIC cost of going to the University of Washington these days.

Tuition & Fees - $10,346 per year.
Books & Supplies - $1,035 average per year.

These figures do not include such things as dormitory rent or regular living expenses, which, if one lived in the dorms, could cost you as much as living in a luxury apartment.

That's way out of line with the rise in general cost of living, and I'm not convinced that the quality of the education is all that much better.

What I did back then, I sure couldn't do today.

So—What the hell happened!??

Don Firth