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Why Summer Jobs
Don't Pay Off Anymore
By Anya Kamenetz
July 25, 2016
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way
earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job
just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you
compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public
university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the
average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and
room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the
government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook
for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a
week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000
tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870
meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent
part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight
months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a
combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all
changed in the wrong direction.
In the school year just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and
board for in-state students at four-year public universities was
$19,548. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was
$5,775. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $13,773.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the
year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research
shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week their
studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to
finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a
student would need to work 21.1 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage
like Washington, D.C. ($11.25) or San Francisco, where it's about to
rise to $13 an hour. But rent tends to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent
because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
Read this and other articles at National Public Radio
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