[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 31 (Thursday, February 16, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E373-E374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  FIGHT CUTS IN STUDENT FINANCIAL AID

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                        HON. PATRICIA SCHROEDER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 16, 1995
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to take note of the 
article in the February 15, 1995, Washington Post entitled, ``College 
Students Spending More Time Earning Than Learning.'' I include a copy 
of the article for the Record.
  At a time when education is more necessary than ever to compete for 
good jobs, financial aid is failing to keep pace with steadily rising 
college costs. As a result, an increasing number of students are forced 
to work more. While a certain amount of work can be valuable, as the 
article points out, it also can detract from studies and drag out the 
time it takes to complete an education, at additional expense to the 
students and their parents.
  Now comes the Republicans, saying they want to eliminate the 
government subsidy for interest on tuition loans while students are in 
college, which would burden students and their families with additional 
debt.
  Republicans also say they want to either abolish direct lending or 
limit it. Meanwhile, I have students telling me they love the program 
because it cuts out the middlemen, delivers the money fast and helps 
prevent defaults. Under guaranteed student loans, students have a hard 
time keeping track of which bank owns their loan this week. Republican 
efforts in this area fly in the face of their rhetoric about listening 
to the grassroots and simplifying bureaucracy. They seem to be 
listening to the bankers and loan guarantors instead of the middle 
class.
               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 15, 1995]

       College Students Spending More Time Earning Than Learning

                             (By Fern Shen)

       Steve Long started school at the University of Maryland in 
     College Park with an ambitious, 17-credit course load and a 
     goal of graduating in less than four years.
       The Richmond native never imagined that he would have to 
     spend so much time working--cataloguing books at the school 
     library, writing tickets in campus parking lots, driving 
     campus shuttle buses--that it would take him seven years to 
     get his bachelor's degree.
       ``It got so bad one semester that I had to drop out of all 
     my classes. I was working 30 hours a week driving the bus and 
     taking five classes,'' said Long, 25, a full-time shuttle bus 
     supervisor and part-time student who hopes to graduate this 
     year with a degree in government and politics. ``It's tough. 
     I learned you can work so hard to pay for school that you 
     don't do well in school.''
       During the last decade, the number of students working on 
     and off campus has steadily increased, a stark contrast to 
     the stereotype of today's twentysomethings as latte-sipping 
     slackers.
       And according to students and college officials in the 
     Washington area and nationwide, 
     [[Page E374]] an increasing number of students are working 
     more hours, often holding down two and even three jobs 
     because they must make money while pursuing college credits.
       Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show a 
     significant increase in the proportion of full-time college 
     students ages 16 to 24 who work, from 35 percent in 1972 to 
     51 percent in 1993. Full-time students now work an average of 
     25 hours a week.
       The reasons for the rise are varied, but most observers 
     blame the way tuition increases have outpaced inflation while 
     financial aid, loans and grants have become more difficult to 
     obtain.
       ``We have shifted so much of the financial burden to 
     students [who] know they have to get that degree, that 
     college is a life preserver, the difference between a 
     comfortable life and a considerably rougher one,'' said Rick 
     Kincaid, coordinator of student employment at the State 
     University of New York at
      Brockport and editor of the Journal of Student Employment. 
     ``So they work, and they struggle to do it all. It's 
     really pretty grim.''
       The trend has extended the time it takes students to obtain 
     their degrees. It also has fueled fears among college 
     administrators that students's academic and personal lives 
     are suffering, though there is contradictory evidence on 
     whether and how much grades fall when students work.
       College presidents are using work statistics to buttress 
     their pleas to Congress against cutting student loan funding.
       ``If we don't sustain the current aid program, students are 
     going to have to work even more hours, and they'll be more 
     likely to drop to part-time or just drop out,'' said David L. 
     Warren, president of the National Association of Independent 
     Colleges and Universities.
       Jeff Blundin, 23, a full-time student at College Park who 
     works 40 hours a week, said he recently had to financially 
     ``cut myself off from my parents so I could qualify for a 
     loan.''
       Blundin attends classes during the day, and at 5 p.m., he 
     puts on a green apron and waits on tables at a restaurant in 
     a nearby shopping center. After finishing his shift about 
     midnight, he comes home to read, study and write papers. On 
     Saturdays, he often works double shifts.
       ``I know my grades would be better if I could stop working, 
     but I just don't have that luxury,'' said Blundin, who said 
     he came to college resigned to the prospect of working long 
     hours to pay for tuition, rent, books and other expenses. As 
     for maintaining a social life or strolling under the elms 
     discussing philosophy, Blundin said dryly, ``That would be 
     great, but college hasn't been like that for a long time.''
       Many parents ``start out planning to pay for college but 
     lose their jobs, and then they just can't do it,'' said 
     Patricia T. van der Vorm, executive director of the Career 
     Center at American University.
       Yomphana Adams, 20, a University of Maryland student, said 
     her family recently had just such a ``run of bad luck,'' Her 
     stepfather lost his job as an air traffic controller at 
     Andrews Air Force Base, and her mother, who has poor English 
     skills, also lost a manual labor job recently because her 
     employer moved, she said.
       Adams, like Blundin, has cut herself off financially from 
     her parents in hopes of qualifying for loans.
       ``It's a gigantic Catch-22: Either you don't have enough 
     money to make it or you make the money but then your grades 
     stink,'' said Adams, who takes four classes, works 22 hours a 
     week at the information desk at the student center and rises 
     at 5 a.m. to catch a train to College Park from Baltimore. 
     When she first came to the college, she worked as many as 
     three jobs, including a stint as a telemarketer. Her grades 
     dipped, ``and I became this massive introvert.''
       ``In high school, I graduated with a 3.5 [grade-point] 
     average, and I was involved in all these clubs,'' she said. 
     ``Coming here, I really had to learn how to manage my time. I 
     go to sleep earlier than most people's grandparents.''
       The student employment picture has changed so much in 
     recent years that students laugh when they learn that school 
     counselors traditionally recommend that students seek career-
     related (but lower-paying) internships and limit their work 
     to 20 hours a week.
       ``Yeah, right--do they also `recommend' that I eat nothing
        but Minute Rice and rob banks?'' asked Jason Putnam, 21, a 
     full-time student at College Park, as he stocked the 
     shelves of a College Park liquor store. Between that job 
     and a side enterprise, doing automotive repairs for 
     students, he figures he works 30 hours a week.
       At College Park, there were so many complaints last year 
     about how jobs were interfering with academics, prolonging 
     college careers and making students' lives miserable, that 
     President William E. Kirwan ordered a committee to study the 
     problem.
       ``I see it all the time,'' said committee member Barbara 
     Jacoby, director of commuter affairs and community service 
     programs. ``I teach French from 2 to 4 on Tuesdays and 
     Thursdays, and last semester this student came to me and said 
     she needed to leave at 3:45 because it took her that long to 
     get across campus to her car and make it in time for her 
     shift at the restaurant at 4:30.
       ``This priority is just wrong. It's the kind of thing that 
     really raises faculty ire,'' Jacoby said.
       As a result of the study, the school is creating a Student 
     Employment Center designed in part to advocate for students 
     with off-campus jobs. The center might persuade employers, 
     for instance, to adjust students' hours to coordinate better 
     with class schedules and the academic calendar.
       Acknowledging those problems represents a change for 
     college administrators, who have been arguing for years that 
     holding down a job during college enhances students' 
     character, academic progress and future job marketability.
       ``Yes, students are working for the money, but they get so 
     much more out of it. They learn job skills, improve their 
     resumes, learn how to budget their time,'' said Dennis 
     Chavez, director of the student employment program at Cornell 
     University. In 1992, Chavez conducted a study of 4,500 
     students at 18 colleges and universities and found little 
     difference in the grades of working and non-working students. 
     Kincaid said he'd seen studies ``that found that if a student 
     gets a job, the first thing they reduce is the hours spent 
     watching TV.''
       University of Maryland officials agree that work is 
     valuable, but they are trying to balance school and work 
     demands and to steer students toward fewer hours and more on-
     campus and career-related jobs.
       Many students there and at other U.S. colleges are taking 
     advantage of programs in which their salaries from campus 
     jobs are credited directly to their college tuition accounts. 
     Lori Spevak, for instance, whose family income makes her 
     ineligible for loans, is paying her $1,700-a-semester tuition 
     primarily out of her 16-hour-a-week job driving a shuttle 
     bus. One night a week, she doesn't sleep, working the 
     graveyard shift. The 19-year-old sophomore from Bowie also 
     works 20 to 25 hours selling musical instruments and sheet 
     music at a Bowie store.
       ``I'm doing it right now to give my parents a break. My 
     sister will be starting school, and they're going to have 
     that expense,'' Spevak said.
       Will she be able to keep up that pace and finish in four 
     years? Spevak said she hopes to, but perpetual sleep-
     deprivation and granola-bar suppers sometimes get her down. 
     Hers is the kind of situation that worries school officials.
       ``I know they need that paycheck,'' said John van Brunt, 
     who directs the student counseling center. ``I know they've 
     got to work, but if it undercuts their whole experience of 
     school, what's the point?''
     

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