Are there any Baby Boomers Here??? What was College LIke in the 60s 70s 80s?? I bet it was Awesome!!!?

you forgot the most important part: it was down right cheap! You could work in the summer and have college paid for and the degree opened up many opportunities after school. Now-a-days it's crap piece of paper with thousands in debt attached but still necessary for many "middle class" (for however much longer we have one of those) jobs.

Early '70s. Drinking age (in NY, at least) was 18. Lotsa other drugs, as well.

There was a fair amount of sex, yes, but perhaps (perhaps) actually fewer casual hookups. There was still actual dating at that time.

The average grade in an undergraduate course was a C. I remember well the prof in my large-lecture (hundreds of students) introductory bio course drawing a large approximation of a bell curve on the blackboard (which was actually green; lecturers wrote on them with chalk) and saying, "Right, the top ten percent of the class will get an A, the bottom ten percent an F; the next twenty percents will get Bs and Ds; the middle forty percent will get a C." The average GPA for someone graduating with a bachelor's degree was 2.xx.

We were the most wigged-out MFs imaginable. Everybody (well, almost) just had an enormous amount of hair...to the point that in my yearbook there are a few pix of people whose hair did not entirely fit in the frame of the photo.

Girls wore miniskirts (generally) and no bra (quite a few). Very few of them were fat.

No smoking in large-lecture situations, IIRC; otherwise smoking was permissible everywhere, and very routine.

If you had a paper to do, you had to go to the library to get the books for your research. Then you typed it up, using Liquid Paper or similar products to correct your errors--and just re-typing a page if you made too many errors in it. The mark of a veteran student was to be able to produce a ten-page paper from start to finish (research included) in 24 hours.

For leg protection while running on cold days we wore thermal-underwear pants.

I never took a drink of water on any run, which included runs up to 20 miles; guys who did take drinks--even crazier, carried water bottles--were considered weird.

If you ran distance races, you aspired to run 100 miles a week. Guys who ran less than 70mpw or so were considered not serious.

Cross-country season had a race pretty much every weekend. There were dual and triangular meets, and you finished the season with a won-lost record. An undefeated dual-meet season was a worthy accomplishment. Nobody tempoed a race; if you were in the race at all, you ran to win, or at least to beat as many guys as you could.

In spring track (before most colleges switched to an early-start/early-finish calendar), Penn Relays marked the end of the relay (aka early) season and the beginning of the meat of the season: several weeks of dual meets and invitationals. Conference meets were toward the end of May or early in June.

The longest race in a dual meet was two miles.

Road races were available pretty much every weekend throughout the summer. The top finishers got merchandise prizes and/or trophies. Most finishers got nothing, except maybe a time and place. Entry fees might be fifty cents.

I never heard of a half-marathon race at that time. My favorite race distance was 20km.

Even pathetic runners (I was considered one) finished marathons in times that started with a "3." Hardly anyone entered a marathon with the *intention* of walking part of it...what would be the point?

There's gotta be a lot more I'm forgetting. I'll add stuff as I think of it, maybe.

Emaciated Hobby Jogger wrote:

you forgot the most important part: it was down right cheap! You could work in the summer and have college paid for and the degree opened up many opportunities after school. [Nowadays] it's [a] crap piece of paper with thousands in debt attached but still necessary for many "middle class" (for however much longer we have one of those) jobs.

Thanks, I'd forgotten about this. I went to one of the country's most expensive private universities. My National Merit scholarship (those could be as much as $1500/yr then) and university scholarship totaled $2800, which paid tuition ($2200/yr) and one semester's room and board. My summer job (typically turning burgers) took care of the rest, and I graduated with zero debt.

Yes is was fantastic. I spent my free time smoking the good herb and enjoying the free love of all the newly liberated women. I didn't have to work in the summers; I basically just traveled around enjoying music and protesting the war.

I wanted to keep the party going so I went to grad school to get a master in sociology. I got to spend my days discussing how the man was holding us down with other like minded individuals.

After I finaly graduated for good I bounced around to various university towns working in various liberal arts departments and teaching a few seminars.

Now I get paid 200k a year to teach 3 classes a semester. I really enjoy convincing all of the young dumb impressionable students to adopt my worldviews. I guess college was so great, I just never wanted to leave.

Bnmp

formerly present wrote:

\There's gotta be a lot more I'm forgetting. I'll add stuff as I think of it, maybe.

Please don't.

b.s. 200k is what gave you away.

The late 1980s were no fun. It was both expensive and the age of AIDS. Police had started raiding parties at colleges. I had a National Merit Scholarship worth $2k from another college but gave that up for better financial aid. I earned about $3k each summer and was just $9k in debt by the end, including an interest free loan from my college. It was an era of low mileage and the one season I stayed healthy more than two weeks at a time I averaged 60 mpw for 9 weeks and was ridiculed for my high mileage. Grade inflation was underway (average was maybe 3.0), but standards at this top liberal arts college were very high, almost everyone else had come from either top public schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, a few others) or, more likely, prep schools (Andover, Exeter and the like). They did not give A's out on papers easily.

thats not unreasonable at all for a tenured prof

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

b.s. 200k is what gave you away.

Not at my former college.

Very few cute coeds on that campus, sort of like my HS. Guess I was cursed. No biggie.

(Plus I was beginning working fulltime so didn't graduate until a few years later.)

theSausageKING wrote:

thats not unreasonable at all for a tenured prof

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

b.s. 200k is what gave you away.

Well to be 100% truthful I make 194k. I just rounded up. Several of my colleagues do make over 200k though.

Having perpetually been on college campuses since 1970 I can tell you that the while the vibe has changed a little I still enjoy pretty much everything about the college experience. Overall things are still groovy.

I am old. I graduated from one of the Ivy League schools in the early 1970s. Let's just say that if you didn't have any aspirations of going to med school, law school, or business school and you picked your courses carefully, you didn't have to work very hard. At all. They weren't giving out the easy A's yet, but...who cared.

formerly present wrote:

Early '70s. Drinking age (in NY, at least) was 18. Lotsa other drugs, as well.

There was a fair amount of sex, yes, but perhaps (perhaps) actually fewer casual hookups. There was still actual dating at that time.

The average grade in an undergraduate course was a C....

This post captures a lot fairly well. Went to a sub-elite DIII school (usually top 10 or 15 in USN&WR lists these days), although they didn't have such rankings back then or if they did nobody paid attention to them.)

Drinking age was 18 and we had a bar in the basement of a dorm. Students worked hard during the week but big parties every weekend. There was a school sanctioned event once or twice a semester with alchohol provided. Dating at our school was fairly casual--it was a bit of a gray area.

Drugs were readily available to those who wanted them (just one guy on our team did that) and any kind of enforcement was rare. I even had a TA make LSD in a lab and sell it. He did get busted and had to serve some probation but no jail time. I think they kicked him out for a semester but he was back TAing in no time. Such leniency would not be apparent today, he'd have been in jail for a few years and of course would have been kicked out of school, probably along with the professors in charge of the lab for allowing such things to occur.

Average GPA was probably 3.0, and average SAT was about 1200. Plagiarism and cheating were not tolerated and would lead to expulsion.

Varsity XC runners did about 60-110 mpw from August through October. Raced every week for 10-12 weeks a year, 4 miles to 10K. Taking a recovery week was frowned upon, even if you had a sore foot or leg or were sick. All races were considered big races.

Some might do a road race or two following XC or in the spring between indoor and outdoor track. And mayb 2-6 road races in the summer, usually 8K and up including marathons.

Our confernce had 2-3 2:19-21 marathoners at age 20 or 21. Yes, JV runners would sometimes run a marathon in about 3:0X, which was considered pretty average.

I worked constantly.

Late 70's-early 80's at a large Pac-10 state school: tuition for state residents was $229 per quarter for 15 credit hours. Huge open frat parties, $2 admission with a live band, no cops unless a fight broke out.

Pre-AIDS days so sex was casual and everywhere. Not unusual to hook up with 10 or more girls over the course of the school year if you were living on campus either in the Greek system or dorms. If you got pulled over by the cops with beer in your car, they would tell you to dump it out, no ticket unless you were an a$$hole or in an accident. If you were drunk, they would tell you to drive home immediately or else go to jail.

Late 80's, small school in the south.. I dont think it was much different than now, only it was a bit cheaper and we were part of the early wave of "everyone goes to college" movement.

I just wanted to finish and get a degree. I cant say it was anything "great" or "special" just a necessary step.

EZ10Miler wrote:

Late 80's, small school in the south.. I dont think it was much different than now, only it was a bit cheaper and we were part of the early wave of "everyone goes to college" movement.

I just wanted to finish and get a degree. I cant say it was anything "great" or "special" just a necessary step.

Okay I'll weigh in here

About similar to my university experience:

1966 - 1971 yes blew my first year. Was never an academic superman

Majored, social sciences.

Frustrated there was no track or x-country team my 1st. Yr.

One was developed in my second yr. enough of us who all knew each other, HS made sure we got one going! With a coach.

Was still really struggling with courses, hated seminar classes and being pressured to lead class discussions, couldn't figure how grades were given for contributing to discussions - talk about a personality conflict.

Last yr. perhaps gained some maturity and managed to finish, as well as run and finish my first marathon. Yup, see how running was then and still now is an important outlet.

Cannot really agree it was awesome or whether I was having a ball, some ways same as high school, other ways different.

Should say I did get my BA but ended up being employed In something totally removed. Mapping, survey knowledge, computer aided draughting, etc.

T-Rex wrote:

Should say I did get my BA but ended up being employed In something totally removed. Mapping, survey knowledge, computer aided draughting, etc.

I should add, that I did really enjoy the experience of running collegiate XC and track. While we were farrrrrrrrrr from a big time program, I liked that I could show up on race day and run against any team. Not too many other athletes can say that about their sport.

But as far as college, I was too busy. I dont have any thoughts of "those hazy, lazy days of college" like some.

You went to class, listened to hour long lectures and with any luck there may have even been a slide or two. You took notes on everything and then went home and read the book. As an earlier post said, grades were on a bell curve. You could work your arse off, have an 85 and get a C. Papers were researched in the stacks of a library. If your school had a shitty library you visited others on the weekend. Complain or screw up and you were off to 'Nam. Going home for services for friends who didn't make it back. Yea, it was awesome.

Some of the not so studious would go out on thursday nights as well as Friday and Sat. For those of us competing, we got to go out on Sat night if we got back to school from the meet at a reasonable hour. Sundays might be the day you had that part time job. Scholarships and grants were pretty hard to come by. AS I said, it was awesome.