Issue #250 - April 2013
Current Issue
These articles are available to current subscribers only. To access the full article you will need to follow the link and then login on the site.
If you are not a current Subscriber you can subscribe now: 
Click here to access: Issue #250 April 2013 (Full Issue)
To view charts below please click on the chart.
U.S.A. Inc. -- Student Employment, 1960 to 2012
To read recent public policy reports on higher education one would conclude the only public interest in college student enrollment is to prepare young people for work--to become productive cogs in our national economic machine. Of course good jobs are necessary to pay off student loans--a burden imposed on many college students by policy choices to make financially needy students pay for a large part of their higher educations. Rarely these days do we hear any discussion of the importance of higher education to the functioning of democracy, to individual and public health and longevity, to civic engagement, to the welfare of children and other socially valuable benefits of higher education that state and federal taxpayers have bought in the past.
After all, we have declared that we Americans are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable human rights, and the role of government is to assure those rights.
Here we review the current public policy obsession of college as preparation for work and describe trends and patterns in student employment data. This review is constructed over those years when school and work compete for the attention of young people. In the United States legal employment begins at age 14 when children are still enrolled in school. The Bureau of Labor Statistics begins data collection on employment at age 16. This does not mean children may not have had odd jobs mowing lawns and babysitting for money earlier. But this is not organization-based regular employment.
Student employment has strong pluses and strong minuses. The benefits are obvious: students need money to live, pay college costs and support their families. They need to learn how to work in organizations with bosses and how to meet the expectations of both employers and their customers.
Moreover, decades of research on students has found that student employment can have positive effects on student grade point averages and academic credit accumulation. However student employment that improves the academic experience must be carefully designed: limited in hours, located on campus and related to the student's academic interests. But student employment in the form of internships can also facilitate the transition from college to careers.
At the same time student employment can also get in the way of education. Excessive hours and off-campus employment unrelated to the academic program of the student interferes with educational progress, and can even derail it. Often this excessive work responsibility results from inadequate financial aid (unmet financial need, student work-loan burden, net price to family), unacceptable financial aid (loans), too-late financial aid (tax credits), and/or financial needs of the student's family that are not included in costs-of-college-attendance.
Read more by logging in as a subscriber
You can read the complete article by logging in as a subscriber. If you are not a subscriber we invite you to subscribe today.
If you are not a current Subscriber you can subscribe now: |
