Modern College Financing in a Nutshell: Would You Like Fries With That?

"Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology." 

--- Clive James

It's a classic Catch-22: to make a good living, it's necessary to earn a college degree. In order to get that degree, however, one must have a glut of expendable income. Now, while some lucky individuals manage to subvert this modicum and craft their fortunes in the absence of higher learning, the average American citizen is not so fortunate. What is there to do, then, in this paradoxical situation?

For many, the solution in the past was to simply forego a degree in favor of working one's way into a comfortable income. This practice, however, became almost ostensibly a thing of the past once the Great Recession set in, with its accompanying avalanche of unemployment, inflation, and heightened expectations for job-seekers across the board. While many who have, wisely, chosen to attend college in this time of turmoil use federal and private loans or scholarships to finance their educations, some of this contingent as well as the majority of self-pay students obtain employment to cover the rising costs of tuition, books, and housing.

The funny thing is, this is far from a novel trend. In 2000, 52% of all traditional, full-time college students had off-campus jobs. The current figure, contrarily, is far lower at 40%. Seemingly out of sync with statistics that show rapidly rising tuitions throughout the U.S., this figure is notable due less to its numeric value than the dedication and time expenditure of the group it represents. While students in 2000 worked in greater numbers, students of 2013 work longer hours, and often for lower wages than did their predecessors.

Among students attending college part time, the statistics are even more striking: 73% of students in this demographic hold jobs, 80% of them above 20 hours per week. Such a busy schedule can put great strain on a student's social life, as well as his or her psychological and physical welfare, among other risks. Chief among most working students' concerns, however, are typically grades and sleep, both of which are far more prone to suffering than in those students who do not work while attending school.

Perhaps in retribution for the complaints lodged by students and parents who have seen tuition rates rise precipitously in recent years, education researchers recently stated that students who work are likely to have higher grades than their unemployed counterparts. While this is partially true, these studies focus solely on those students who work from 10-15 hours per week, the typical work load for a federal work-study recipient.

Regardless of the immediate consequences of working while attending school, however, many students look forward to the eventual payoff of their educations, regardless of how they obtained them. For many recent graduates, having a degree in the "real world" has been a bitter pill to swallow: while there are more jobs available to degree-holding applicants, the opportunities are limited in scope and financial gain. Graduates hoping to land a six-figure job on Wall Street upon receiving their degrees often, instead, find themselves filing paperwork or frying burgers to the tune of $10 an hour.

Why, then, put in all the work if the end result is no different than the means by which one arrives at it? For students who work their way through school, this question may be all the more salient; many of them, unfortunately, may find themselves remaining in the same jobs after graduation, at the same pay rate. While this may be a dream of the unemployed and uneducated, it is little compensation for four (or more) years of working one's fingers to the bone in multiple arenas.

However, as the American economy shows signs of recovery, albeit slow ones, there is hope that all those hard-fought college degrees will prove their merit, after all. Once the job market is once again rife with opportunity, degree-holding applicants will become increasingly valuable, and will command a higher share of the company dollar. Until that point, however, many college graduates may find themselves continually fantasizing about the day they can hang up their grease-stained aprons, leave behind those golden arches, and enter the careers for which they studied, and worked, so diligently.


References (click to link to articles):
"College costs: As tuition rises, more students are saddled with expensive loans," Tribune Chronicle, 3/10/2013.

"It takes a B.A. to find a job as a file clerk," The New York Times, 2/19/2013.

"Students scramble to make college work," The Kansas City Star, 3/9/2013.