On its website, the undergraduate financial aid office emphasizes its goals of “equality of opportunity,” its “no-loan” aid packages and its commitment to meet every student’s full financial need. It seems that it fails to meet these three proud targets, perhaps deliberately, as another part of the aid package is a $2,700 “self-help” component requiring students to work “an average of 9 hours a week for 30 weeks” in order to actually afford their studies. This clearly disadvantages poorer students, limiting the time they can devote to their studies and extracurriculars.
Of course, this kind of “earn it yourself” aid is actually just a different — and perhaps worse — kind of loan: one that needs to be paid back immediately and at low campus-job wages. The publicity effect of a “no-loan” policy might justify the “self-help” burden, if it really is financially impossible for the University to meet full need and ensure equal academic opportunity. However, as the financial aid budget steadily increased over the last decade, the size of the work component barely budged: A 9.6 percent increase in the financial aid budget for the 2010-11 academic year did not lead to a significant decrease in the work expectation even though it comes in at only about 8 percent of the average aid grant. This unresponsiveness of the policy to changing financial circumstances suggests that the University sees merit in the policy in addition to the savings it provides.
While I am unaffected by the policy, some of my friends have tried to make a moral case for it: It teaches that one has to work in order to show gratitude for Princeton’s generosity — a lesson in humility and the principle that “you can’t get something for nothing.” On the other hand, hands-on work experience might be character-building and contribute to a student’s sophistication. However, I doubt that the students from poor backgrounds are the ones most in need of these insights. Moreover, if the University considers these experiences to be essential, why not make them a compulsory part of the undergraduate curriculum. We wouldn’t want the other students to miss out on this great education, would we?
More pragmatically, these jobs might just “need to be done,” and why not use students for that? However, given the slack in the labor market outside our walls, and the willingness of some students to work even without the University’s “labor aid” package forcing them, I am optimistic that the dining halls would not sink into chaos if this policy were ended. While there might be a very valid reason behind making students on financial aid work, I think it is fair to say that it is badly publicized.
However, short of simply expanding financial aid, there are alternative policy options available to the University to achieve somewhat greater equality of opportunity: Whereas the addition of work or service hours as a new distribution requirement for undergraduates seems excessively paternalistic (although well in line with the development tax on bananas sold at Frist Campus Center), the University’s existing option of replacing the work requirement with a subsidized loan represents a small step in the right direction.
The financial aid office should promote this postponement of payments until after graduation as a serious, even preferred, alternative to working on campus. Students and parents, on the other hand, should actively seek it out. Depending on personal circumstances, it can be a costly waste to wipe tables or scan books at $10 per hour to the detriment of academics and future employment prospects, as well as some of the most enjoyable and intensely busy years of our lives. When faced with the choice of repaying this loan called “student contribution” now or after college, when the hourly wage will almost certainly be higher and the opportunity cost of missed connections and withered opportunities less dear than during our time at Princeton, the right decision should be obvious. It would also be something new for many who have previously been led to believe that working a campus job was the best thing to do.
If the financial aid office is serious about achieving equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds during their time at Princeton, it should promote financial alternatives to taking up campus jobs or it should abolish the work component of aid altogether: There is a 270-hour bump in the playing field that needs to be smoothed.
Gregor Schubert is an economics major from Leipzig, Germany. He may be reached at gregors@princeton.edu.
Read More
Princeton’s administration of justice is Trumpian
Frances BroganThe disparity between the University’s approach to Giberson and its approach to pro-Palestinian protestors reflects a concerning trend of appeasing an increasingly emboldened right rather than resisting the threat it poses to academic freedom and the wellbeing of Princeton students.
Secular Opening Exercises? Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water
Frank StrasburgerThe secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
The secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
Return Pete Hegseth’s educational ideologies “to sender”
Lily Halbert-AlexanderHegseth believes students are being raised to “see America as an evil place” because his confining approach to education leaves no room for admiration and criticism, hope and horror, to coexist. He treats American history, patriotic ideals and the “pillars of Western civilization” as if they were made of glass, as if “cross-cultural encounters” and critical race theory, the “cornucopia of diversity” he criticizes, could shatter them.
Hegseth believes students are being raised to “see America as an evil place” because his confining approach to education leaves no room for admiration and criticism, hope and horror, to coexist. He treats American history, patriotic ideals and the “pillars of Western civilization” as if they were made of glass, as if “cross-cultural encounters” and critical race theory, the “cornucopia of diversity” he criticizes, could shatter them.
