|
|
Carrying the College Burden
Students are working more hours to compensate for changes in financial aid, but their jobs add stress
by Lisa Aichlmayr
 Paul Dinehart works 50 hours a week while taking 17 credit hours. (photo by Michele Lenni) |
He woke up at 5:30 in the morning and didn't see his bed again for about 22 hours. But he wasn't out having fun. He was working to pay for a degree from Kent State.
Paul Dinehart, then a freshman education administration major, worked at his first job at the Old Mill Winery in Geneva in the morning. He then went to his second job, Wal-Mart in Streetsboro, for a 13-hour shift. He regularly worked 60 hours a week with 14 credit hours.
Now a sophomore, Dinehart works an average of 50 hours a week at the same jobs in addition to taking 17 credit hours. He is part of the growing trend of students who work long hours while also taking classes, in part because of the changes in college costs and financial aid. With these longer hours sometimes come excessive stress.
"Students are more stressed out in a sense that they go to classes and work a lot more," says Thomas DiNardo, a psychologist at Psychological Services. "What they usually do is cut out sleep, and that's what produces stress. Some people are busy and can get away with it for a while, but it catches up later, and it's a vicious cycle."
For Dinehart, his stress catches up to him when he's most tired.
"It's just when you want to go to sleep that you wonder is it worth it," he says. "It is because I don't want to do these small jobs forever."
Even though he has scholarships from his summer job at Kirtland Country Club in Willoughbyand from the Northern Ohio Golf Association, Dinehart still has to maintain his busy work schedule to pay for school without taking out any loans. At the same time, he must maintain a 2.5 GPA to keep both scholarships.
"I don't take out loans because of job security when I get out," he says. He wants to avoid debt, even if it means working longer hours in college.
Simply being able to afford school is becoming a major obstacle for many students.
"In the '60s, it was possible to work your way through school," says Ronald Shunk, director of financial aid at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. "The minimum wage students earn and loans haven't kept pace with the inflation of costs. It's conceivable they could borrow that much, but would they want to? They would have to consider the debt obligation later."
Although in 1999 the average rise of public college costs was only 3.4 percent and 4.7 percent for private, the lowest increases in 12 years, tuition has still passed the current rate of inflation, according to the College Board, a non-profit educational association. The Consumer Price Index, a measurement of inflation, rose only 2.3 percent.
Tuition has also grown faster than family income, making a college education increasingly out of reach. The average tuition for full-time undergraduate students rose 44 percent from 1990 to 1996, according the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. But the CPI rose only 15.4 percent, and the median household income rose just 13.8 percent.
Shunk says the fast-paced increases are largely from the costs of technology and faculty, both of which have been crucial for colleges in recent years and whose costs also have grown faster than inflation.
Nancy Scott, vice president for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, says these components have accounted for most of Kent State's tuition hikes. She adds the university set aside an additional $1.1 million for scholarships and building renovations out of the money from the 5.5 percent tuition increase for this fall.
Scott says the Ohio Board of Regents sets 6 percent as the limit for tuition increases.
"I know it's difficult. We're very sympathetic to those needs," Scott says of students who work and face rising costs, which invariably means more work. Scott adds Kent State's tuition raises are watched closely because of its close competition with Bowling Green State University and the University of Akron.
Along with college costs, the face of student financial aid is also being modified.
"Nationally, the student aid mix is changing," says Mark Evans, Kent State's director of Student Financial Aid.