Studies Get Back Seat to Earning Tuition

By MINERVA CANTO

Local News Columnist/B1

The Orange County Register

As director of financial aid at UC Irvine, Brent Yunek sees the direct result of tuition hikes. More need and less money.

"We're into the business of helping kids go to college and helping remove the barriers, but the barriers keep increasing," Yunek tells me when I call to find out how tuition increases announced last month will affect students.

Take Jenny Lee. The 19-year-old sophomore was up early on Thursday so she could work a full day at a local coffee shop. Her day ended with a three-hour shift selling costume jewelry at an outdoor vending booth at the Irvine Spectrum.

Finally, at 10 p.m., she sat down with her books.

"It's definitely hard to fit in time to study," says Lee, who estimates she has about $200 left over each month for food and other incidentals after paying for rent and other expenses.

But isn't studying supposed to be a student's main job? Not for an increasing number of students, who are having a tough time with tuition going up every year.

To make up the difference, Yunek says, students are working more than ever and borrowing more.

I hate to think what the consequences will be, but it's clear to me that affording college is getting harder and harder. A time that's supposed to allow young people to devote themselves to gaining knowledge and exploring career opportunities now has become a chaotic period for many students balancing work and studies.

Chaotic is how I remember my time at the University of Southern California, a college I chose because of its journalism school. A hefty price tag of approximately $80,000 in tuition and living expenses for four years did not deter me, probably due to a combination of naïveté and determination.

I applied for every scholarship that I could, thankfully earning one for community volunteerism and another for my interest in journalism, among others. But the college is so expensive that I found myself working a lot. One semester, I juggled my full-time studies with part-time jobs as a sales clerk at a department store, an assistant at a campus office, and as a two-day-a-week feature writer for the school newspaper. Needless to say, studying and classes took a back seat that semester. Other semesters were only slightly better.

As a result, I remember college as perhaps the most stressful period in my life.

But it isn't supposed to be this way.

And, thankfully, it isn't this way for everyone. Yet.

Jessica Clark, 20, is a junior at UC Irvine, where she is majoring in criminology. She's one of the few people I spoke to who didn't seem too worried about tuition increases. This might be because she's living what I think should be the ideal student life.

She works about 10 hours a week at UCI's financial-aid office, a job that allows her to cut her hours during finals week so she can devote more time to her studies. In her free time, she likes to paint people and landscapes. Although she lives on a limited income, she doesn't worry about money the way Lee does.

I don't see life getting any easier for students attending public universities in California. The tuition hikes approved last month by University of California regents marked the fourth year of increases, for a total increase of 79 percent. Attending a UC school will now cost just under $7,000, not including living expenses.

Students at California State University campuses also face higher tuition next year. The trend is the same nationwide, according to the College Board, which tracks college pricing.

And recent changes made to eligibility calculation for the federally funded Pell Grants will mean fewer families will qualify.

Yunek is already worried about what's to come.

Students are taking out more private loans, especially if their parents can't or won't take out additional loans to pay for their child's education. Many students, he says, are increasingly taking out these loans offered by financial institutions at a higher interest rate than federal education loans.

There are no easy answers. College affordability is a concern faced by students of modest means, as well as those who fall into the category of making too much to qualify for the financial aid they need, but not enough to pay for college outright.

Addressing the College Board Forum last month, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers said, "The American dream is becoming more remote, as the gap between the life prospects of the children of the fortunate and the less fortunate widens."

Short term, high tuition costs are robbing many students of their time to focus on learning and choosing a career.

Long term, expensive tuition could mean that education, traditionally the great equalizer that allows the have-nots to join the haves, is becoming an eroding American ideal.

Copyright The Orange County Register December 7, 2004