Summary Of Alena Semuels 'The Reality Of Paying For College'

Neill provides data on the increase of amount of students working full-time and part-time jobs during their education. She shows how this has been increasing since the 1970’s and more students are having to work while attending college to pay for expenses. This source also helps demonstrate how a shrinking middle class is affecting college students because low-income students need to work during college. It also provides more evidence on how increasing tuition is affecting students in general.

Are you tired and having trouble paying attention in class? Focusing on tasks at hand? Or just completely being overall unproductive? The average college student is deprived at least two full hours asleep each night according to “College Tidbits” a website designed to promote healthy lifestyles and productivity in daily college life. These results were pooled from multiple surveys done over hundreds of campuses throughout the United States. Today, I hope to persuade you to fight the statistics and get those extra two hours of sleep. Do what it takes to get the full seven to nine hours that is suggested by the Mayo Clinic. I will discuss two problems. Why college students are not

Many college students have non-traditional situations. Some students have children or dependents that limit their available hours. This can be hard because financial aid is not given to part- time students and they may not be able to afford their classes or a caretaker. Students also may drop out because they don’t want debt in the future and can’t afford college on their own. Some students work full time or have multiple jobs to support themselves and pay for their education. This makes it hard to pass a class because they lack time to study or to do their work outside of class. For example, an article about why students drop out states that “Nearly three-quarters (71%) of students who dropped out of college said that work contributed to the decision, with more than half (54%) identifying it as a major factor” (Kantrowitz, 3). This is a significant example because it provides hard evidence that many students are dropping out or failing because

A major problem for today’s high school graduates is the rising price in college education. Attending college can add up really fast; it can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars per year (Barkan 1). No wonder, in Steven Barkan’s book of social problems, issues and problems in higher education take up a full chapter. In this chapter, Barkan states that only 44% of all students who attend a four-year institution is lucky enough to have annual tuitions and fees amount to less than $9,000 per year. The aggravating question is, “why does college cost so much?” Not only is tuition part of the cost of college but also fees housing and meals, books, school supplies, and accessories (“What’s the Price Tag” 1). All tuition covers is the money for academic instruction. Fees are charges for specific services such as, internet access, and then the cost of books and school supplies add up. Additionally, one is not paying just for textbooks but also

Over the past twenty-five years, college costs have accumulatively risen four-hundred percent. The percent of parents who contribute to their child’s student debt has dropped from thirty-seven percent to twenty-seven percent, compared to three years ago. Due to the lack of aid, most students have to try to balance a job and school at the same time resulting in eighty-five percent of college students working at least twenty hours a week. It has also been noted that students who work twenty hours or more a week while attending classes at the same time are less likely to graduate due to the high stress environment. Sixty-two percent of college students who drop out were responsible for their own college education. Even when students drop out, thirty percent are still faced with college debt, creating a loophole impossible to recover

Journalist David Leonhardt, in his article “Is College Worth It? Clearly New Data Say,” argues, through the use of statistical data, that from both a financial and economical perspective, that pursuing a higher education is beneficial. Leonhardt provides data from the Economic Policy Institute that states that, “Americans with four-year college degrees [made] 98% more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree.” Furthermore, on average, college graduates make “about $32.60” an hour while the average wage for those who did not pursue higher education is “about $16.50.” The disparity in wages should be a sufficient reason for pursuing a higher education. Yet, Leonhardt concedes that there is and will always be a percentage of graduates that will be unsuccessful in finding employment. According to Leonhardt, this unfortunate

Researchers have found that a majority of workers with bachelor degrees or higher have higher salaries than those without. The downside of these statistics is that student debt has climbed to over 1.3 trillion dollars. Colleges have been working to aid students by cutting tuition costs and offering more scholarships, but the hopes of potential students look to be declining (Mitchell). From this journal, I learned that the value of a college degree is an opinion that varies among different social classes, social grounds, and political groups. When I read that less and fewer Americans are finding the value in a college degree, I decided that the next step in my research would be finding out the opinions of those who do see the value in a college degree.

The topic of paying for college has been a widely debated issue for students. Some people believe college is too expensive for teens who have just began to wander around the adult world, while others feel college would be taken for granted if the student doesn’t make an effort for their education. Higher education may include longer years of studying, loans and debt. This is what makes society feel that college should be free. However, it must be acknowledged that free college really isn’t free and misunderstanding this concept would be an economic mistake. Although it’s understood that college comes with a great price, eliminating the cost for higher education would increase taxes, diminish the value of a degree and may cause students to not

Academic obligations are not the only responsibilities for American high school students. One of the responsibilities that many students have is a job. The unemployment rate for teenagers is a mere 9.1 percent. The reasons why students work wildly vary. For some, it’s to earn

Relevance: Sleep and college life often seem to bump heads. With pulling All-nighters, stress and socializing it makes it difficult when a college student has the freedom to sleep whenever they want but the work that goes along with college makes it difficult to have the best of both worlds.

Weaver from Oklahoma State University. According to the authors “the purpose of the present study was to determine if sleep deprivation and/or poor sleep quality in a sample of non-depressed university students was associated with lower academic performance” (Gilbert, Cameron. 295). The study was also made to determine the relationship between sleep deprivation, sleep quality, and academic performance (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). It was hypothesized that by the end of the study, participants who had higher levels of sleep deprivation and poorer sleep quality would have lower academic performance (as indicated by grade point average [GPA] and course incompletions—drops, withdrawals, and incompletes) than participants with little sleep deprivation and good sleep quality (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). By the end of the study, the authors discussed the results in the following narration:

Most of us working students probably wouldn’t have chosen to work full-time while attending college, but we didn’t have the choice. Still, many of us have

• Students are increasingly likely to work while in college. Since 1984, the fraction of

The first cause of students dropping out of college is due to the fact that they are unable to balance their work and school together. A questionnaire was completed by 42 first- and second-year students from a single degree program at the end of Semester 2. Findings - Within this group, 83 per cent of students worked at some point during term-time of their degree program. In total 58 per cent of those students who worked did so to either cover or contribute to basic costs of living. While the majority of students felt they could balance work and study, half of all students questioned felt that working could have a negative impact on their degree classification (Working to live). Even full-time

Working college students can also suffer outside of classes and the workplace. For example my schedule illustrates the conflicts of trying to take on too many duties. Since I work nights during the week, the weekends are a more convenient time that I can study. Because I have to use my weekends to do school work, I can’t do other things. My apartment is a mess since I have no time to clean it. Worse, my girlfriend is threatening to leave me because I have no social life. We never even go out like we once used to now when she comes over, I am too busy studying. However the rewards of earning a college degree in this economy can be the difference between having