ARCHIVE :: JANUARY 2003 :: COVER STORY

The Impossible Dream?

It's Getting Harder To Work
Your Way Through College

By Robert Tomsho
STAFF REPORTER OF The Wall Street Journal

After high-school graduation, Paul Dinehart dreamed of becoming a teacher or a principal. He thought he could work his way straight through college with sheer determination and be the first in his blue-collar family to earn a degree.

Now in his fourth year at Kent State University, the 21-year-old isn’t sure. On a recent day, Mr. Dinehart sat at his computer before dawn, trying to cram in some last-minute study. He had a political-science exam at 9:15 a.m., but his construction job started at 7. He was short on time and confidence. “I’m going to butcher this,” he muttered, shutting down his computer. 

With hard hat on, Mr. Dinehart arrived at a dusty site where a new Kent State dormitory is being built. He spent two hours sweeping floors, refueling generators and operating small earthmovers. Then he hustled across campus to his exam, reeking of diesel fuel and struggling to recall material he’d studied the night before. The rest of his day included two more classes, a second stint at the construction site and a 12-hour shift at an off-campus bar till 3:30 a.m. His grade on the test? C.

Dying Tradition

 The ability to work your way through college has long been a symbol of American educational opportunity and personal achievement. But with tuition rates soaring, even at the public colleges that are supposed to be the affordable option, carrying on the tradition has gotten tougher.

After adjusting for inflation, the average tuition at a four-year public school increased 117% between 1981 and 2001. The rise was 123% at private schools. The increase in financial aid available per full-time student lagged, at 112%, during the same period, while the inflation-adjusted median family income rose only 25% (Click here for related article.)

The changes in tuition economics reflect increased university spending on technology and faculty salaries as well as a long-term shift by the state and federal governments toward placing more of the burden of higher education costs onto students and their families. Since the 1980s, financial-aid policies have moved away from need-based grants in favor of loans (Click here for related article).

To meet the rising prices, a growing number of college students have resorted to sometimes withering workweeks. Studies show that working beyond 15 or 20 hours a week can result in lower grades and higher dropout rates. Yet many students are well beyond that. Nationwide, 74% of all full-time undergraduates were working in 1999-2000, and they averaged 25.5 hours per week on the job, according to the most recent federal statistics. That was up from 1992-93, when about 65% of full-time undergraduates were working and the average work week was 23.5 hours. Over the same period, the percentage of full-time undergraduates who were working full-time, or at least 35 hours a week, rose to 19.7%, from 13.5%.

‘A Bad Joke’

 As college prices have risen, so have educational debts. A full-time student graduating from a four-year school in 1999-2000 did so with an average of $16,900 in school-related federal loans, up 69% from 1992-93.

For working students, the result is a financial landscape that has changed dramatically from a generation ago. “The idea of working your way through school has really become a bad joke,” says Tom Mortenson, publisher of the newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity. He estimates that in 1974-75, a student had to work about 25 hours a week at minimum wage to pay the average price of a state college or university. By 1999-2000, that hypothetical workweek had increased to 46 hours.

Hoping to avoid adding to a $60,000 debt load, Raye Taylor, a preveterinary-medicine student at Iowa State University, in Ames, now works 45 hours a week at a university laboratory and a local motel. One problem: fitting certain rarely offered required classes into her work schedule. Sean Romano recently dropped out of the University of Pittsburgh a second time so that he can work full-time and save up money to re-enroll. “I’m determined to do it, but it has proved to be a little more than I expected,” says the 23-year-old, who has juggled jobs as a pizza-shop manager, a diving coach, a bartender and an exterminator.

The son of a school-bus driver and a package-delivery man, Paul Dinehart grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Willowick, Ohio. Neither of his parents went to college, nor were they ever able to save much for their two sons’ college expenses.

As a boy, Paul was a mediocre and sometimes unruly student, but he promised he would be transformed if he could attend Lake Catholic High School, a somewhat pricey private school in the area. His parents agreed but, with another son to educate, they warned that Paul would have to find a way to pay for college himself.

Paul’s grades never rose much above a low-B average at Lake Catholic, but he excelled in athletics—wrestling and football. Several small private colleges offered partial football scholarships, but they covered only a small percentage of overall costs. In the end, Mr. Dinehart decided on nearby Kent State, a school known regionally for its nursing, education and business schools. It has long been regarded as an affordable option for working families.

When Mr. Dinehart enrolled in the fall of 1999, Kent State tuition was running about $5,000 a year, with room, board and other costs bringing the total annual bill to around $11,000. Even if Mr. Dinehart didn’t qualify for any outright grants, he thought he could handle the tab on his own. He got a job working afternoons and evenings at a Wal-Mart, where he unloaded trucks and accepted deliveries. During the warmer months, he continued driving back to the Willowick area, to work as a caddy and landscaper.

But as Mr. Dinehart’s courses grew more challenging, balancing work and study became harder. He took out loans and picked up odd jobs as a valet-parking attendant. He quit Wal-Mart for the more-flexible hours of the Robin Hood Inn, where, for up to 30 hours a week, he tended bar and worked into the wee hours as a bouncer.

That left little time for trips to the library or uninterrupted study. Mr. Dinehart was forced to switch to a political-science major after falling below the grade-point average he needed to qualify for junior- and senior-level education courses.

In May, Kent State raised its tuition for the third time in two years, by $500 to $6,400 annually, or about 28% more than when Mr. Dinehart enrolled in 1999. Faced with a troubled economy and uncertain job prospects after graduation, Mr. Dinehart was afraid to add to a debt load that now topped $11,000. Instead, to begin making the installment payments due for his tuition, he borrowed money from his father and took yet another part-time job, cleaning vacated apartments for a local landlord.

By the end of the spring term, he was bringing home, on average, about $1,250 a month from his various jobs, with roughly $1,000 of that coming from the bar. He was paying about $400 a month for rent and utilities, and $600 for tuition, fees and books. After spending about $150 a month for groceries and fast food, he had little left to cover the cost of clothing, gas, phone bills, fraternity dues and car insurance. Then there were car repairs and setbacks such as a long bout with mononucleosis.

No Time for a Tutor

 This past September, some construction workers came into the Robin Hood one day while Mr. Dinehart was tending  bar. Hearing about his stretched finances, they said their company was looking for a laborer to work up to 20 hours a week on one of the new KSU dormitories. The pay was nearly $27 an hour. Mr. Dineheart signed on.

But the money couldn’t buy him enough time. The junior- and senior-level courses required more study, and fitting that into his tight schedule was a constant battle of tradeoffs. He managed to keep up with the heavy outside reading for his political-thought class last fall, but that left almost no time to master a required course in microeconomics. He ended up with a D. Looking back, Mr. Dinehart says there were times he knew that he probably should have sought out a tutor. “But I didn’t have time for that,” he says.

Mr. Dineheart could no longer imagine being able to turn his academic fortunes around while he was working up to 50 hours a week, at the bar and the construction site. With only a year or so of college to go, he worried about what his degree would eventually be worth, given his grades. “You drag yourself through the coals every day, and for what?” he says. “If I want the grades, I’ve got to take some time off.”

From school, that is.

Rather than cutting back on his hours elsewhere, Mr. Dinehart has been skipping classes so that he can work. He also talks about quitting school altogether to concentrate on saving enough money so that he can one day re-enroll and finish without having to worry about a paycheck.

Such talk worries Jennifer Woods, Mr. Dinehart’s girlfriend. A Kent State student who works part-time at a bank to pay her own expenses, Ms. Woods has had several good friends quit school for financial reasons, promising to return. “They still haven’t gone back,” she says.