Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. I was referring to work-study during the school year; independent employment during summer break.
My point was that it would be difficult for a student whose post-grant/scholarship school costs were @ $10-15K/year to make that kind of money during the summer break. Not too many students make $1K or more per week.
For a top-notch education @ Stanford, to graduate with $50K in loans after four years would not be that bad. I’d venture that those grads are 90%+ employed within 6 months, even in a tough economy. Most of the “highly competitive” universities make sure their students are adequately funded, one way or the other. I know most if not all the “Ivies” make sure their students are 100% funded, and graduate without debt.
Look at Chelsea, just a few years after graduating she was able to buy a $10 million Manhattan condo!
I disagree. The elite schools take it for granted that their students know how to find jobs, or have parents who can pull strings for them to get jobs.
I know there are smaller schools that manage their work-study the same way: Carson-Newman here in Tennessee for instance.
I went to Michigan, and had I known what the huge difference there was between the financial aid I was offered and the financial aid I actually received I would never have gone there.
Now yes, you can trade your work-study for a loan, but I didn’t want an empty resume when I graduated. Unfortunately that’s what I got.
When you complain, the Student Employment Office will tell you that “there’s 2000 jobs in the catalog, you ought to be able to find something.” Unfortunately quite a few of them are very discretionary - they have no problem leaving them vacant for the entire school year. Also a lot of them are really filled but they go through the pretense of interviewing you — although when you call up about a job as soon as you tell them you have no experience it is very unlikely they will invite you in for a face to face interview.
Maybe you know someone at Stanford who was able to claim the grant but I strongly believe there was some other student who wasn’t able to claim the grant.
See if you can actually get data on placement. I’ll bet you can’t, and if you can, you can’t believe it.
What I would prefer to see is that if you can’t claim your work-study, you should be able to trade it in for a Pell Grant. Not dollar-for-dollar — just the federal portion.
So if you get a $1000 work-study grant and can’t find a job, you should be able to trade it in for a $750 Pell Grant. But the colleges would never agree to that because they’ve already doubly awarded the same grants to multiple students.
The law says they are allowed to do that.
Also the Dept of Education should publish the placement rates.