full-time college/university is designed for rich kids

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sephardic-male
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06 Feb 2014, 6:47 pm

i have been saying this for years but people don't believe me



recently i read “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality,” by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and company. this book mainly focuses on women students. they stay in dorm with a bunch of female students to do their research.i relate to the less affluent ones who don't have parental financial support while attending. in the book i forgot which page number. it clearly states that a full-time schedule is only for for unemployed students with parental financial support. the less affluent and working class girls ended up dropping out and transfering to other places. like them i had to drop out of of poor excuse of an Ontario college of applied arts and technology and switch to part-time. my college experience is what lead to my mom taking me to a psychiatrist and i got my aspergers syndrome diagnosis.



like me who find my previous college experience depressing the researchers also find the whole experience depressing.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/educa ... .html?_r=0


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DarkRain
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06 Feb 2014, 10:04 pm

I was a full-time college student who graduated in 2005 (with a 3.4 GPA, by the way), and I am nowhere near being rich.



zer0netgain
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06 Feb 2014, 10:57 pm

What manure.

Anyone going to college full-time is not going to necessarily be from a wealthy family. Most are borrowing on student loans to cover the bill. If they are working a part-time job, it is probably more to provide spending money for stuff they need which wasn't covered by student loans and financial aid.



thewhitrbbit
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07 Feb 2014, 10:45 am

My best friend had very little support from her parents financially in college. She at times worked 2 jobs. She is now very successful.

I worked 30-35 hours a week as a student to support myself. It paid my rent, and my food and a few pennies left over for booze. I smartly lived in a very, very affordable sublet.

Now we were both smart and went to an affordable university and had some idea of what we wanted to do. That's a big part of the problem, I see a lot of people not graduating in 4 years because they go to college with no clue what they want to do.



starkid
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07 Feb 2014, 2:44 pm

zer0netgain wrote:
Anyone going to college full-time is not going to necessarily be from a wealthy family. Most are borrowing on student loans to cover the bill.


If they have to borrow student loans to attend full-time/not work, that supports the OP's point.



zer0netgain
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07 Feb 2014, 3:18 pm

starkid wrote:
zer0netgain wrote:
Anyone going to college full-time is not going to necessarily be from a wealthy family. Most are borrowing on student loans to cover the bill.


If they have to borrow student loans to attend full-time/not work, that supports the OP's point.


My understanding of the OP was that people going to school full-time/unemployed were from affluent families. I disagree.

At least here in the USA, many students WITHOUT much in the way of financial help from parents attend full-time and unemployed on student loans. Going part-time isn't much of an option because most schools put a time limit on when you have to complete your degree, and no part-time job (heck...even most full-time jobs) will pay enough to let you work your way through school. It's faster and perhaps better to get it done on a full-time basis then spend over a decade doing it a bit at a time.



FunkMasterMike
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04 Mar 2014, 4:43 am

Since I have served in the army, they do pay for my school and books for 36 months.
I'm far from being rich. :D



Felwitch
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16 Mar 2014, 3:35 am

I am currently living in the campus dorms, full-time college student, and unemployed. My family is probably middle-class.
Each semester costs me around $6,500 and that price covers books, four classes, dorm, parking pass, meal plan.

I am 27 years old, throughout high-school and up to the age of 25 I worked Part-time. After High-school, I worked part-time while commuting to a community college where I would take 2-3 courses a semester. Now that I am at the university, I am living off of my saved up income that I earned from the years in high-school, early college. I have enough money to get a B.A. After, if I want my Master degree, I will need to go back to working to save up more.



sonofghandi
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17 Mar 2014, 2:21 pm

I think that the way college is structured it definitely favors wealthier families, but that really doesn't mean all that much. I went to school full-time and worked full time to get my AS. For my BS, I worked 3 part time jobs (although one of them was only 4 hours a week). I was working full time when I was getting my MBA as well.

Even with working and with the GI Bill covering a huge chunk, I still have a heap of student loans to pay back.

Only more 5 years to go on those payments! 8)


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sephardic-male
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08 Apr 2014, 7:00 pm

thewhitrbbit wrote:
My best friend had very little support from her parents financially in college. She at times worked 2 jobs. She is now very successful.

I worked 30-35 hours a week as a student to support myself. It paid my rent, and my food and a few pennies left over for booze. I smartly lived in a very, very affordable sublet.

Now we were both smart and went to an affordable university and had some idea of what we wanted to do. That's a big part of the problem, I see a lot of people not graduating in 4 years because they go to college with no clue what they want to do.



if you work 35 hours a week while attending full-time how do you find the time to study and do assignments. in order to keep up you should spend 2-3 hours studying for every hour of class. this means if one do 15-20 hours of class a week one should expected to do 30-40+ hours of studying outside of class.


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anarchybovine
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08 Apr 2014, 8:36 pm

My cousin works 30 hours a week, takes 15 credits per semester, and she has a 3.9 GPA. Granted, she goes to a public university in her state, and she got some good scholarships. She does not get any help from her parents.

I, on the other hand, get f****d over with financial aid. My parents make too much for me to qualify for any aid, but not enough to contribute significantly. And I'm too average to qualify for any scholarships. So, I'll be working and taking out private loans to pay for college. At my university, it's flat rate tuition if you take between 12-18 credits. So if you can handle a heavier course load, it's actually cheaper to take more credits, because you'll graduate sooner. But if you go over 18, you have to pay more.


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thewhitrbbit
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08 Apr 2014, 11:14 pm

sephardic-male wrote:
thewhitrbbit wrote:
My best friend had very little support from her parents financially in college. She at times worked 2 jobs. She is now very successful.

I worked 30-35 hours a week as a student to support myself. It paid my rent, and my food and a few pennies left over for booze. I smartly lived in a very, very affordable sublet.

Now we were both smart and went to an affordable university and had some idea of what we wanted to do. That's a big part of the problem, I see a lot of people not graduating in 4 years because they go to college with no clue what they want to do.



if you work 35 hours a week while attending full-time how do you find the time to study and do assignments. in order to keep up you should spend 2-3 hours studying for every hour of class. this means if one do 15-20 hours of class a week one should expected to do 30-40+ hours of studying outside of class.


It's a challenge, but I really found that whole metric to be a bit of the old bs. Some classes you can pass just by going to lecture, and do well in to not just pass. The important part is to make sure you spread out of the classes you can do well in just by going to lecture so you don't get a full semester where you have to study your ass off.

Also, I worked nights in the student help center. We were allowed to do homework at work as long as it didn't impact customer service. Lots of on campus jobs allow this, but even if I didn't have time to study I usually worked 6-11:30 so I'd study at lunch, at dinner, things like that.

It's really about learning where you need to focus your studying efforts and where your really just wasting time studying because you already know it.

Other things you can do, use the Add/Drop to your advantage. If you get a teacher who thinks their 101 class is actually a 400 level advanced quantum thermodymanics class, I actually think I had one teacher I walked out of the class halfway through it because it was a 100 level class and the amount of work was a 400 level.

My friend didn't work on campus her last 2 years, and had a 40 minute commute.



aar2697
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09 Apr 2014, 12:55 am

College is expensive, but it's still possible for unwealthy students to pay for it. I think I might take a gap year so I can save money before college. I read one of the reasons why it's so expensive is that a lot of average, dumb students go to college, raising the costs because of the high demand and whatnot.



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09 Apr 2014, 6:40 pm

What are the majors of these students attending full-time and working nearly a full-time hours!? I'm thinking, no one but a genius or a workaholic could pull off a STEM major and this many work hours. As a full-time student in physics, living on campus with a mere two hours of extra-curricular activity per week, I could not even keep up my nine hours a week working at the library.



thewhitrbbit
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09 Apr 2014, 11:19 pm

I was Liberal Arts. My friend is Health Professions, I know a girl who is a chemistry major who works 4 nights a week.



sephardic-male
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10 Apr 2014, 8:26 am

starkid wrote:
What are the majors of these students attending full-time and working nearly a full-time hours!? I'm thinking, no one but a genius or a workaholic could pull off a STEM major and this many work hours. As a full-time student in physics, living on campus with a mere two hours of extra-curricular activity per week, I could not even keep up my nine hours a week working at the library.



still waiting on how they find time to study and do assigments.


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