It doesn't matter that a student can't afford their books on $7/hour. No one seriously expects a kid to make even a dent in the cost of his education anymore, because relative to cost of attendance (except at community colleges) kids in general just don't have the earning power.
Cost of attendance at my state flagship is $24,000. Full time at minimum wage is $15,080. Any education worth that kind of money is hard enough that you physically can't work full time while doing it. Student labor is pretty miniscule as a source of funding.
In other words, $264.39 is not actually 37 hours at McDonalds. It's a rounding error on a parent's 6-figure contribution over 4 years. Or a rounding error in your monthly loan payment when you're making $50k instead of $8k. Or it's coming out of interest on the school's endowment if the school is good enough and your family poor enough. Or it's coming from whoever funds your scholarship if you are one of the handful of people smart enough to get a merit-based full ride. Etc.
(No, your experience of putting yourself through a state flagship in the 80s is not relevant. Minimum wage is roughly what it was; tuition is decidedly not.)
I believe the textbook publishing industry could adapt (or be disrupted) to be more cost-efficient, but you would first have to vastly reconfigure the higher education system such that it's reasonable for students to pay their own way. Then you'd actually have incentives to price things for students.
A large proportion of my students work part time jobs for 20+ hours a week.
I don't really understand how they can afford tuition + room + board but need the $140 (less taxes) a week, but as it turns out this is very common.
It made a big impression on me when a student walked in to turn in his homework wearing a Chick-Fil-A cap. Asking around, I learned that this is typical at the university where I teach.
So, yes, here at least, $264.39 is 37 hours at McDonalds. Well.... taxes.... so make that more like 50.
>I don't really understand how they can afford tuition + room + board but need the $140 (less taxes) a week, but as it turns out this is very common.
As a student, maybe I can shed a little light on this.
There are a few reasons working part-time at minimum wage can make economic sense for a student.
At least at my institution, few kids whose parents foot the tuition bill work.
The students most likely to be working 20 hours/week are the same students likely to receive some form of financial aid/merit scholarship. As such, the tuition + room + board costs may be significantly less than the sticker price. Considering this reduced expense, the ~$200/week from part-time work may make a considerable contribution to a student's budget.
Even if these students aren't able to completely cover the remaining cost of school not covered by financial aid, there are many instances where that part-time job replaces a potentially high interest student loan, reducing the overall cost of education in the long run.
In some instances, even students whose parents assist them with educational expenses require a part-time job for discretionary expenditures. I have more than one friend whose parents pay tuition, but do not cover the cost of gasoline/car repairs necessary for the student to go to class.
It's pretty simple: grants and loans cover tuition, fees, housing, and very little else, so that $150/week from working part time is what students are living off of.
When I was a working student, I was maximizing my student loans every quarter. My wages were going toward rent, credit card payments, and anything else I couldn't pay with credit cards.
I also worked 40-50 hours per week during the summer. Between that and loan distributions, I could just barely keep up with my typical costs. If anything went wrong--e.g., an injury (yep!), car repairs (yep!), fines (yep!)--the credit card debt didn't get paid off.
You might predict that I would graduate with a lot of debt. You would be right. In spite of having a merit scholarship for full tuition and $4500/year, I had over $35,000 in student loans and another $5000-10,000 in credit card debt when I graduated.
I take classes at a decently ranked public school, and many of the students are not having tuition paid by scholarship or endowment. Their parents are certainly not paying the full ride - they may contribute a little, if anything. Students can't always get all the loans they would need, and it doesn't make financial sense to pile too much of that on. So plenty of people are paying out of their salaries. I do this and many of the people I speak with do this.
You talk about full-time classes and a full-time job. Actually some of my classmates are raising children or that sort of thing as well. But beyond that, you're correct that it is hard to take a hard STEM major full-time and also work full-time. It would be almost impossible to maintain a 4.0 or 3.9 or whatnot. The solution is obvious, don't take a full course load - take three classes a semester, or perhaps two, or perhaps one. It takes longer, but what is the alternative for those who can't afford full-time study?
If some 18 year old can't really afford full-time study...then don't do full-time study. Why make your parents shell out thousands they can't afford, as well as burdening yourself with enormous loans, for something you may very well not complete in four years. Some kids graduate and are not working - a lot nowadays. On this public school commuter campus, the smarter half of the CS major seniors I know have never heard of software version control, have no idea what git, Perforce, cvs etc. is. Most of our professors are good too - most of them understand their topics, and some are even good at explaining it. A dedicated person can get a lot out of the education, and then perhaps go get a Masters at a more prestigious school afterward if they want.
If people can't afford fulltime, don't go fulltime. Maybe the government should help more, maybe not, but if someone can't pay fulltime they should go parttime.
Cost of attendance at my state flagship is $24,000. Full time at minimum wage is $15,080. Any education worth that kind of money is hard enough that you physically can't work full time while doing it. Student labor is pretty miniscule as a source of funding.
In other words, $264.39 is not actually 37 hours at McDonalds. It's a rounding error on a parent's 6-figure contribution over 4 years. Or a rounding error in your monthly loan payment when you're making $50k instead of $8k. Or it's coming out of interest on the school's endowment if the school is good enough and your family poor enough. Or it's coming from whoever funds your scholarship if you are one of the handful of people smart enough to get a merit-based full ride. Etc.
(No, your experience of putting yourself through a state flagship in the 80s is not relevant. Minimum wage is roughly what it was; tuition is decidedly not.)
I believe the textbook publishing industry could adapt (or be disrupted) to be more cost-efficient, but you would first have to vastly reconfigure the higher education system such that it's reasonable for students to pay their own way. Then you'd actually have incentives to price things for students.