Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to I did say "as a student."

Students and minimum wage
dtb — (archived)

Seemed your first paragraph was describing your student experience, and second merely included the generic statement that "a single person", no limitation to students.

But even so, let's look at your assumption that a student could do "quite well" working for the minimum wage while going to school.

University costs are quite a bit different now. At the University of Oregon, for example, the cost of living in a dorm is about $900/month (for 9 months), and in-state tuition is another $500/month (spread over 12 months). $100/mo for books, lab fees, etc is another reasonable guess, and student health insurance is $175/month (for those not being covered by their parents; it's not included in tuition). Add in $125/mo to cover all other expenses, and that's $1,800/month, or a required salary of $11/hour if our student works 40hr/week all year.

Obviously the student could take out loans and would likely qualify for a Pell grant of a couple of thousand, but I occaisionaly see people make this sweeping assertion that it's easy to work your way through college, and in fact that tends not to be true anymore. Students without a lot of parent support, even at state schools, are either working extremely long hours to the detriment of their studies, or going way over their heads in credit card debt.

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