Student Life

Around campus there's always a variety of different types of students. There are the really involved students who take part in different clubs and organizations on campus, planning different events and activities on and off campus. There are the students who aren't too involved, but still spend a lot of time on campus, there are also the students who are rarely on campus, and everything in between. According to a study from Indiana University conducted by Sociologists Daniel Rudel and Natasha Yurk, "Responsibility or Liability? Student Loan Debt and Time Use in College," a student's overall college experience can be classified by the amount of debt they're collecting while completing college.

According to the study, there are three main types of attitudes students typically have depending on their financial standing with the university. They can be classified as the students with the "play hard" mentality. These are usually the students who are more involved in campus and meeting new people through different activities. Then there are the "disengaged students," who have debt and tend to hold back from taking part in extracurriculars on campus, in many cases to devote their time to a part time job. The last of the three are the "serious students," who have debt, but typically involve themselves in campus and dedicate more time to working and studying with intentions to prepare them for the future.

In response to the term disengaged, assigned to students of the middle category, who opt to work in order to compensate for the rising cost of attending college, I do not believe that is fair to assume that these students do not WANT to take part in activities on campus. In many situations, it is a necessity for these students to work to help balance the cost of living, especially here in San Francisco.

In a society where just about of 80% of full time college students are also working, it's the reality that we now face. As Svati Kirsten Narula points out in her analysis of how it is no longer reasonable for a college student to pay for their own education by working part time either throughout the year, or by obtaining a summer job. Whereas before, it was reasonable to assume that if a student worked about 20 hours a week part-time, or had a summer job, they could pay for most, if not all of their tuition, leaving them without debt by the time they graduated. Now, according to the numbers that Narula has calculated, it would require a college student to work about 48 hours week at minimum wage to try and pay the cost of tuition each semester.

This graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows the increase in student debt over the last few years.

Taking these statistics into account, I feel that this middle group of students is misunderstood. In a time of financial stress for many, it's become more of a necessity than a choice for college students to work. Sacrificing the carefree lifestyle that many college students look forward to taking part in, as well as missing out on the opportunity to be involved on campus.