Students increasingly have to work to make it through college
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By JEAN ORTIZ/Lincoln Journal Star
The spare thirty minutes here or an hour there is what Nathaniel McHargue really savors.
They have become hidden gems of time for the Nebraska Wesleyan University student who juggles his studies in music education with a job at a Gateway Mall clothing store and another on campus doing data entry and other work.
Altogether, the Scottsbluff native puts in about 20 hours a week during the school year. His earnings go toward living expenses from his off-campus apartment, with a little help from the saving he grows during the summer months when his work week can stretch to 50 hours.
Rising loan volumes and the watchful eye of Congress have meant some changes for the student loan industry, which today does more than dole out money to students.
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Worker stats:
Seventy to 80 percent of undergraduate students work while enrolled in classes, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, dependency or marital status, enrollment status, type of institution attended, income or educational and living expenses.
A majority of all working students say their primary reason for working is to pay tuition, fees and living expenses.
Sixty-three percent of working dependent students say they work because their parents expect it of them.
Of all undergraduates polled, 26 percent worked up to 20 hours per week. Another 17.5 percent worked 21 to 34 hours weekly. Another 34.2 percent worked 35 or more hours per week. The remaining 22.3 percent said they did not work.
Of full-time students, 23 percent worked 35 or more hours per week while enrolled, compared with 53 percent of part-time students.
Source: American Council on Education
But McHargue, who will be a senior in the fall, never expected much different.
“It was never an option whether to work or not, it was just where,” he said.
Working has long been a staple in many undergraduates' college years, but the rapid rise of college costs in the last decade may have put students into a new kind of balancing act, higher education officials say.
Nationally, 78 percent of undergraduates work and on average put in 30 hours per week, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics gathered during the 2003-04 academic year, as analyzed by the American Council on Education.
And the situation is not much different in Nebraska, where more students are prone to working through school than their peers elsewhere in the nation, said Carna Pfeil, the commission’s associate director.
Call it the good ol’ Midwestern work ethic.
The commission last studied the issue in 1999 in a poll of student borrowers. It found 82 percent of respondents reported they worked while enrolled as an undergraduate. The commission also concluded that Nebraska student borrowers frequently rely more on work than on other sources to supplement the loan funds they use to pay educational expenses.
Anecdotally, higher education officials say they’ve seen the dependency on work grow right along with rising college costs.
The hunt among undergrads for part-time employment has caused Nebraska Wesleyan officials to conduct an annual part-time job fair every fall. The event, during the first week of school, has run for three years and has grown annually, said Geri Cotter, the director of the university’s Career and Counseling Center.
It’s how McHargue found his on-campus job at, of all places, the career center. It was his second job that was harder to come by. After transferring from Western Nebraska Community College in August, McHargue’s job hunt stretched to December when a friend passed along word about an opening at American Eagle Outfitters.
McHargue blames his erratic schedule for the hiring delay. He said it was hard to find a job flexible enough to work around his classes or performances that sometimes went into the early evenings.
It’s never taken prodding from Mom or Dad about getting a job, he said. It’s just always been something he knew he’d have to do if he went to college.
Feelings of obligation are not uncommon, Cotter said.
Parents are finding themselves in the sandwich generation -- torn between providing for their parents and their children -- which leaves students facing more of an obligation than a choice to work, she said. That tension has always been there, she admits, but today it’s a bit different.
“I think more pressure is being put on the student to try and contribute,” she said.
In some cases students are working to have money for the extras, but more often they are serious about getting a good education and are working to contribute to that goal, Cotter said.
The work experiences are certainly showing up on resumes, that now leave some students struggling to fit everything into a single page, said Larry Routh, the director of career services at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 1988 when he first came to UNL, he more commonly saw resumes half to two-thirds of a page full, he said.
He’s also has seen more students who hold down two jobs, which used to seem a rarity, he said.
UNL’s Office of Undergraduate Studies has examined the issue by polling undergraduate students about their work motivations and habits in a study released in 2004. The survey found 24 percent of first-year students work up to 20 hours per week off campus, compared with 33 percent of seniors who worked up to 20 hours per week off campus.
Some 48 percent of first-year students said they worked to cover basic expenses, while 13 percent said they needed the extra spending money. By comparison, 65 percent of senior students said they held jobs to pay for basic expenses and 11 percent worked for extras.
Students as well are feeling the pressure to make room in their schedule for internships, which aren’t always paid, Routh said. The situation has left some students to choose between work or an internship, and they often have to choose the former knowing they stand to lose a competitive edge after graduation.
“They almost apologize,” he said of students caught in the quandary.
Consequences also are on Craig Munier’s mind. The director of UNL’s Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid said national studies have shown that students who work up to 20 hours per week can see a positive impact on their academic performance. But it’s the students who are putting in more than 20 hours -- something not uncommon these days -- that have Munier concerned.
Learning through the college years isn’t limited to the classroom, said Munier, who says experiences through extracurricular activities also play an important role in a student’s development. Students working too much risk missing out on such opportunities.
Worse yet, some students may work themselves out of college.
Adding to the frustration for some is that as college costs have risen over the years, some families and even members of Congress continue to look at the higher education financial picture through the lens of their own experiences, he said.
Parents who worked their way through college often expect the same of their children, although not realizing earnings don’t reach as far as they used to, he said.
“While I’m not saying that’s impossible, it’s much harder than it was 15 years ago,” Munier said.
Reach Jean Ortiz at 473-7107 or jortiz@journalstar.com
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