Analysis: Is It Possible To Work Your Way Through College

Is It Possible to Work Your Way Through College? The majority of people today live to tell their rags to riches story of how they have acquired if not all a great deal of what they own due to their individual hard work. Once a young adult is enrolled in college, they consume a massive amount of responsibility and gain their own sense of independence if their sense of the concept was originally weak. Author Svati Kirsten Narula of “The Myth of Working Your Way through College” posted in The Atlantic, wrote this article to convince ambitious college students that aspire to put themselves through college that it is no longer as tangible as it was 15 to 30 years ago which is correct especially if the student is not receiving family support or

The anecdote she begins her article with is that of a boy, Olsen, and his grandfather conversing about how the grandfather praises the action of one putting themselves through college on their own (The Atlantic). The boy refutes his grandfather’s claim by challenging that it may have been easier to do years ago but that is no longer the case. This anecdote benefits the plot development by laying out the foundation of the argument which is to figure out if it is truly possible for one to pay for college and all its expenses by himself. Narula then transitions to the logical appeal in order to support her claim with factual based evidence. Also she does this to boost her credibility by adding on to her experience which has previously been with other articles and research on environmental economics. Above all she concludes with a satirical statement which reads “It’s more important than ever to make sure that, if you’re not working 40+ hours a week at a minimum wage job while in college, you’ll be able to get a better paying job after graduation” (Narula pg 3). This quote can be interpreted as how Svati feels toward the topic, being that she thinks no one should attempt the impossible

The study being looked at is of the tuition cost per credit hour at Michigan State University which is relevant because Olsen, the boy from the anecdote, attends this school for graduate studies. The first point being made is that costs of credits per hour are constantly rising; broken down the cost between one credit hour at MSU in 1979 which was $24.50, and one credit hour today costing $428.75. The next point being made is that there have been changes in minimum wage. This information is relevant because the prices of the courses vary due to this. The first graph “hours worked on minimum wage per MSU credit hour” is the visual display of the trend of the rise in work hours as the years go by. In addition to that the study was taken to a broader range by looking at the tuition cost for all four year public universities in the U.S. The second graph introduced was to show the amount of hours worked at a minimum wage job to pay for one year of public university tuition. Narula says “If each credit hour required 20 hours of minimum wage work, a student would have to work 16 hours a week to pay for school.” Henceforth new graph has a strong correlation in the trend to the MSU trend. Even though she admits that it can be done, she follows up by saying that “Today the same student would work 48 hours a week to at his minimum wage job to pay for his