To work or Not to work while in College

With graduation coming soon, and working full time, a De Anza student finds it hard to balance her work and school.

            Yanely Medina, 23, senior photography major, is taking nine units, and works full time as an assistant manager for a retail store. Medina said she considers herself to be “workers who study”.

             Medina is like many other college students who considered themselves as “workers who study”, according to a report/study for Upromise “Learning and Earning: Working College” by Jonathan M. Orszag.  Working students can be categorized into two groups: those who identify themselves as students but who work to pay the bills, and the others considered themselves workers first but workers who take college classes.brockport.edu/career01/upromise.htm

            According to Medina her life was not well prepared. “I have a child to feed and bills to pay, I want to pursue higher education because we are told this is what we have to do to be better,” said Medina “, but we are not told how to balance everything from being a student paying tuition and taking care of a child.”

             As tuitions have risen and more undergraduates are enrolling later in life, nearly half of all full-time students and 80 percent of part-time students work numbers that are likely only to grow in the future, according to Sebago Associates, who also shows that Fifty-seven percent of all college students have jobs.

techpaladin.com

            UC Berkley alumna, Jessica Delgado 23, believes that it is hard maintain a job and going to school. “I struggled a lot to pay my fees on time and get good grades but I did,” said Delgado “, I almost did not graduated because I spend more time making money than making the grades.”http://grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/cost_fees.shtml

Gary R. Pike, lead author of one of two studies by the National Survey of Student Engagement examined the relationships among students’ employment, engagement, and academic achievement.insidehighered.com Pike’s study shows that students like Medina and Delgado who worked more than 20 hours a week on campus or off has negative affects on their academic performance. “As the significant time that students spend working ultimately drags down their grades,” stated Pike.

Ireeon Bryson, 22, a third year business major at Clark Atlanta University, said she is feeling the stress of college. “I may not be so stressed if I did not have to work,” said Bryson, “ I have to work cause I have bills to pay, but when the grades are out I think to myself was working worth failing this class.”cau.edu/Student_Accounts_Tuition_Fees.aspx

Mark H. Salisbury, a research assistant and doctoral student at the University of Iowa, who presented one of the two studies at the institutional researchers’ meeting sated, "It makes more sense that work could have positive effects on one thing and negative on another, and that it would affect different kinds of students differently. And that's what we find,"

Working while going to school can be difficult to balance but it helps students communicate better with others and gain more leadership skills, Salisbury’s study showed.

As Medina prepared to leave campus to head for work, she looked up at the sky and took a deep breath.
“ Another day,” she said, “ but in my case another day another dollar.”

Yanely K. Medina

SJSU first year students Micheal Alezandre and David De La Cruz
search for jobs in the school newspaper and book offer by SJSU career center.