Unfair Class Bias
Tuition was a significant barrier for me in attending an Ivy League university. I originally couldn’t afford to attend Yale with the initial amount of financial aid they were offering me, but when I informed them that Columbia was offering me more, they raised the amount. My father received a small raise at the end of my freshman year, and the amount of financial aid I was offered for my sophomore year was lowered by over $10,000, which is dauntingly disproportionate. I was shocked by how drastic the difference was, considering that half my tuition had been covered by financial aid the previous year. The “self-help” I was then expected to contribute with a student job toward paying off my tuition became a substantial obstacle for a comparatively insubstantial amount of money.
Working ten hours a week is a completely exhausting, unmanageable, and unrealistic expectation of students. Today, students are not simply expected to work a job and do homework for their classes; participation in extracurriculars largely defines one’s experience at college. Besides enriching one’s academic involvement and providing professional opportunities, investing in extracurricular life is a way in which many students ‘give back’ to the Yale community. However, the extent of my involvement in extracurriculars at Yale is highly constrained by the fact that I have to work ten hours a week and don’t have the time and energy to give more deeply to the organizations that I love. I am forced to choose between working and taking advantage of my Yale experience. The membership and administration of many organizations at Yale are unfairly class-biased in this way—the people who are there are there because they have the time and the energy. And that’s often not feasible for students who have to deal with the student income contribution.
Even the employers at Yale are aware of how unfair a burden the student income contribution is. My own boss told me at the beginning of the year to worry about my education first and my job second, and basically implied that she would look the other way if I didn’t work enough hours to fill the ten-hour quota every week. I know other students whose employers who have explicitly told them to just put more hours on their timesheets. I feel guilty every time I do this, even though it’s what I have to do to stay afloat at Yale, and my boss knows it. I find it unfair that I have to justify my place at Yale by working, instead of participating more fully in the intellectual environment here as many of my peers have the luxury of doing, as Yale ostensibly desires for its students. Instead, when I do just that—spend more time on school and extracurriculars—I have to take away time from this job that Yale has dictated I must have in order to “value” the education I have here.
Working ten hours a week is a completely exhausting, unmanageable, and unrealistic expectation of students. Today, students are not simply expected to work a job and do homework for their classes; participation in extracurriculars largely defines one’s experience at college. Besides enriching one’s academic involvement and providing professional opportunities, investing in extracurricular life is a way in which many students ‘give back’ to the Yale community. However, the extent of my involvement in extracurriculars at Yale is highly constrained by the fact that I have to work ten hours a week and don’t have the time and energy to give more deeply to the organizations that I love. I am forced to choose between working and taking advantage of my Yale experience. The membership and administration of many organizations at Yale are unfairly class-biased in this way—the people who are there are there because they have the time and the energy. And that’s often not feasible for students who have to deal with the student income contribution.
Even the employers at Yale are aware of how unfair a burden the student income contribution is. My own boss told me at the beginning of the year to worry about my education first and my job second, and basically implied that she would look the other way if I didn’t work enough hours to fill the ten-hour quota every week. I know other students whose employers who have explicitly told them to just put more hours on their timesheets. I feel guilty every time I do this, even though it’s what I have to do to stay afloat at Yale, and my boss knows it. I find it unfair that I have to justify my place at Yale by working, instead of participating more fully in the intellectual environment here as many of my peers have the luxury of doing, as Yale ostensibly desires for its students. Instead, when I do just that—spend more time on school and extracurriculars—I have to take away time from this job that Yale has dictated I must have in order to “value” the education I have here.
