Radioshack College

Let me make this more concrete. Perry notes that, in 1964, Radio Shack sold a stereo system nobody today would want for $379.95. 1964 also happens to be the year my parents started college at the University of Michigan. According to Michigan's Bentley Library, in-state tuition that year for freshmen and sophomores was $140 ($155 for juniors and seniors.) So, a stereo cost more than a year of college in Ann Arbor. Is life so much better now? Yes if you're a middle-class person who wants a stereo. No, if you're a middle-class person who wants a college degree. Now, most people today would consider a college education overwhelmingly more valuable than a stereo, and find it hard to believe that there was a time when the latter was comparably priced eith the former.