Money Matters

Earning to Learn: Financing Cal

With college expenses on the rise, most students must not only borrow but also bring in a paycheck during their college years.

By Cathy Cockrell

Work-study student Jana Lim sorts corn kernels in a genetics research lab. Jana Lim photo

Summer 2005 | Months before attending her first Berkeley class, freshman Jana Lim began searching for a job that might help her pay for food and books and provide a less tangible currency: work experience. As a financial aid recipient with a work-study award, her persistence paid off. Shortly into the semester, Lim started a part-time job on campus, sorting and packaging corn kernels by the thousands in a maize-genetics research lab. Glamorous it's not—but as a future molecular and cell biology major, she's already gained "invaluable" exposure to faculty, graduate students, and the lab environment, as well as needed cash.

Lim is one of a large and growing cohort of Cal students who are continuing the time-honored tradition of "working one's way through college." The rising costs of a college education demand it. For California families, the estimated total cost for a year at Berkeley (fees, room and board, and all expenses) is $23,000.

Jana Lim's advice to those who have work-study as part of their financial aid package Start the job search early, and keep checking the campus work-study Web site, as there are frequent updates. Begin a list of potential jobs with all the application information and start contacting the employers at least a month before you plan on starting at Cal. Keep an open mind about the type of job you consider applying for, and try anything that is even somewhat related to your interests (it's a great way of checking out a field and gaining some focus as to what you want to pursue in college).

To meet the challenge, seven of ten Berkeley undergraduates receive some form of financial assistance; five of ten (more than 11,000) receive federal, state, and/or campus grants and scholarships as well as a work-loan package. Each year, some 2,400 undergraduates take advantage of their work-study awards, and about 8,000 more find non-work-study jobs through the campus's Career Center (career.berkeley.edu/).

Varied financial strategies
Each family can decide how much work and loan to accept, notes Financial Aid Office Director Cheryl Resh. Data collected by her office indicate, in fact, that many students are opting not to take out the loans included in their "self-help" packages because their parents are loan averse. Some of them, she suspects, are using their credit cards instead (although a low-interest federal Stafford Loan, on which no interest is paid until after graduation, is far less expensive in the long run). Others are trying to cut expenses.

"We haven't seen any major escalation in parent borrowing, either, even though costs have been going up," says Resh. "What that means is that students have been containing costs, for instance by choosing to live in co-ops or triples."

In many cases, students have tightened their belts so far that they're running out of "extras" to eliminate. "We think we're getting to a point where it's too difficult for students not to take out loans," says Resh. "If they're worried about finances all semester, they can't concentrate on what they're here for, their academics. . . . Students (and parents) need to start thinking about working and borrowing," she believes.

Balancing school and work
If, for most Cal undergraduates, working is now an inevitable part of the college experience, that's not necessarily bad news. National research shows, says Resh, that college students who work 10 to 15 hours per week have a higher graduation rate than the overall student body. Above 15 hours a week, however, students' course work begins to suffer, and those working more than 20 hours a week have significantly higher drop-out rates.

Freshman Christine Wong's experience, working seven to ten hours a week in a campus office, seems to jibe with these findings. "Before I had a job, I'd waste tons of time surfing the Internet," she says. "Working forces you to get your priorities straight. You have less time to waste, more incentive to be productive."

Third-year student Tami Lau doesn't have to work to make ends meet; her Regents' Scholarship covers all her college expenses. "My parents have been trying to dissuade me from working since I got here. 'Focus on your schoolwork. . . . Focus on what's important,' they say."

Tami Lau helps students plan environmental events. Cathy Cockrell photo

Somehow, though, work itself has become "important" to Lau. She got a job in a local music store her freshman year (it featured "good discounts on music" but overly long shifts, she says). Then she landed what she calls "the best job on campus"—helping students plan environmental events like Earth Week, Sustainability Week, and an intercollegiate recycling contest. Lau says the job has taught her people skills, Internet and computer skills, even how to construct a giant globe (which she's donned more than once to impersonate Mother Earth). "It doesn't feel like a job," she says, "because it's so much fun."

Subsidized work-study
Before being considered for grants and scholarships, most Cal families are expected to contribute $8,600 a year through a combination of federally subsidized educational loans and work-study income. The latter is an appealing option, as the campus subsidizes 45 to 55 percent of a student's salary, thus giving employers a strong incentive to hire a work-study applicant.

"As far as we know, we have the largest off-campus presence of any work-study program in the country—both in terms of the number of off-campus employers we work with and the number of students who receive job offers," says Dave Williams, senior analyst at the Work Study Program.

At any given time, depending on the season, the work-study Web site (workstudy.berkeley.edu) lists between 80 and 200 job openings on and off campus, and many of these listings represent more than one open position. Cal students receive close to 600 job offers a year from off-campus employers, who run the gamut from the Alameda County Bar Association and the local UPS Store to the Institute for Health Policy Solutions in Washington, D.C.

Students also can opt to accrue less debt (the Class of 2003 graduated, on average, about $15,000 in the red) by converting some of their subsidized loan dollars to work-study dollars.

"Particularly during the summer," says Williams, "we have work-study poster children who will earn nearly all of their entire year's worth of work-study, working 40 hours a week, and then come back and either choose not to work during the semester or to convert some of their loans to work."

Senior Ryne Didier is one of those poster children. In her freshman year, she got a medical society in her home town, where she'd volunteered during high school, to sign a work-study contract with the campus's Work Study Program. "So every school holiday since then, Christmas and summers, I have worked off some of my work-study award there. It's a great way for me to pay for school and for the medical society to get someone with experience." On campus, Didier took an office job at first, but by her sophomore year had discovered a more fulfilling work-study position, tutoring local elementary students through the campus's Cal Corps Public Service Center.

"I don't necessarily have a choice not to work," says Didier. "So I make the best of it, and have picked jobs that are interesting, fun, and rewarding."