We are demanding impossibly high expectations in regard to our students, financially and physically. Professors' workload requirements and tuition and fee demands show a gross negligence towards today’s economy. You simply cannot expect students to be able to afford the money it requires to get into college and the time it requires to stay in, and certainly not both at the same time.
It is not uncommon knowledge that college is expensive. But what I was not aware of, much like other students, is just how close to impossible the feat is. We all know the government leans on our parent’s financial means to fund our college education. In fact, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid puts the expected contribution from parents at a whopping 22 to 47 percent of their eligible income. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect parents to contribute this much for one child, when many have other mouths to feed and house. This is why I, and many students like me, find ourselves in the position of having to fully or partially support ourselves financially.
So, what do we do? Well, naturally, we don’t expect anything to be handed to us, so we get jobs. To attend University of South Carolina as an in-state student it is going to cost you $24,462 a year. That means a four-year degree will cost you $97,848. I can hear my uncle at the Thanksgiving table now, “Oh, but hush, snowflake. If I could manage, so could you."
Well, this number differs vastly from even 30 years ago when tuition would have been $17,624 for four years, or adjusted with inflation, a total of $39,462 for the same degree.
So, you manage to get into school and now you’ve got to figure out how to pay for all this. So, you get a job that pays minimum wage like most entry level college students do. At $7.25 an hour working 40 hours a week, you can count on roughly $15,080 a year and, mind you, this is before taxes. Well, you’re still short $9,382. So you get a second job. Because, truth is, even if you put every single dime you made towards college, you would have to work roughly 65 hours a week for four years to make that full amount of $97,848. This isn’t even counting groceries, car insurance, cell phone bills and other expenses.
But my uncle from turkey day didn’t have to pull 70 hours to go to college, not even close. In fact, if my uncle worked just 40 hours a week for the full four years at the minimum wage of $3.35 he would have accumulated $27,872 in those four years, not only paying fully for college but having an additional $10,248 to invest in other ventures. Adjust that with inflation and, in today’s terms, that’s $22,946, folks, or roughly half of my student loans.
So, what do we do? Well, the obvious answers would be making college more affordable or providing more scholarships. But those are all very big fish to fry, and I am not interested in debating our economic system (at least not today). So, instead, I propose professors be more concise with their syllabi and reading assignments.
At minimum, students must take 12 credit hours a week. On top of those 12 hours in class, they are expected to contribute three hours for each credit hour, making for 36 hours of studying and school work each week. That 36, plus the 65 I have to work to afford just college, leaves 67 hours a week. If I sleep 8 hours each night (let’s all laugh together at this one), that leaves me with 11 hours a week, or roughly 1.5 hours a day, to commute, eat, exercise and somehow cover the rest of my expenses towards, oh, I don’t know, staying alive. And I can’t cut class hours or I lose my scholarships.
Professors, I am not asking for an easy way out. I am just asking for an easier way. Simply cutting an hour of homework time a week would make a world of difference. I know it’s not fair to ask so much or, in this case, so little of you. But its also not fair to demand the impossible from us. Our other option is to drown in student loan debt or simply not go to college.