Originally Posted by
Cruz5350
So you paid roughly $100 bucks an hour (nobody is getting near 50 hours a semester now). You mean to tell me 10 years ago you couldn't find time building programs that would get you equal to or less than $100/hr in a Seminole or duchess? You can find places that do that now and 5 years ago let alone 10 it was cheaper than that. Don't take what I'm saying as a personal attack, but it's just another way for the university to scam money from students. If departments truly paid for the aircraft to be chartered than they should let select students get to fly the planes for free. In fact if you want to give them a real dose of reality let them sit with the plane at FBO's until the clients are ready to go home like how it's done in the real world.
I'm sure there were ways to get multi time for cheaper back then, but I was also working and going to college full time so I wasn't able to travel very far looking for it. The FBO at Carbondale, Southern Air Service (don't know if it's still there) was charging around $120 for their Seminole. Plus I needed the credit hours so to me it made sense. I don't regret doing it and the instructors I flew with were great. Sure there was a lot of hand holding but by the end of that semester I was pretty much doing everything myself with them watching over.
Of course it's a way for the university to get money from students, just like it is in every other field of study at every other school. My wife's a teacher and when she was getting her masters one of the requirements was for her to mentor a student teacher. So she had to pay to take a course during which all she did was go to work and supervise this student teacher, who by the way was also paying the school to get the credit for student teaching. So the university was receiving tuition from two students without having to do anything other than some administrative work.
I'm not trying to justify the course, I'm just describing my experiences with it. If it's $6k for only 20 hours now, then no that is definitely not worth it. When I did it I felt that it was worth what I paid.