SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Student debt may hurt chances at full-time employment:
A recently published study led by The University of Texas at Arlington says that student debt may hurt students' chances of securing full-time employment due to added pressure in their job search.
[...] The researchers say that having student loan debt is a financial stressor to students that leads to additional stress during their job search, which in turn can harm their chances of securing a full-time job.
"Student loan debt creates an anticipated loss of financial resources, which brings higher levels of stress to student job-seekers," said Froidevaux, who is a fellow of the Eunice and James L. West Distinguished Professorship. Her research interests include career transitions, retirement and aging in the workplace, and identity negotiation.
The more financially strained individuals are, the less likely they are to have sufficient energy and motivation to invest in their search for a successful job placement, she said. Results from the study also suggest that students who are more stressed about their student loans were likelier to work more hours in part-time jobs. This stress in searching for a job reduced the likelihood of securing full-time employment upon graduation from college. The research team used data from 1,248 graduating seniors from four different American universities.
The current level of student loan debt in the USA is $1.6 trillion, above credit card debt and auto loans, and second only to mortgage debt.
Journal Reference:
Ariane Froidevaux et al, Is student loan debt good or bad for full-time employment upon graduation from college?, Journal of Applied Psychology (2020). DOI: 10.1037/apl0000487
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @04:43AM (4 children)
I am a faculty member at the University of Nebraska. I regularly get emails from the university's founding asking me to contribute to the "Husker Food Pantry" to help students who have to choose between college expenses and food. At the same time, we have multiple levels of administration with $200+k/year salaries. Our new university president has a $935k/year salary, roughly a 70% increase over his predecessor. Lots of money is spent on building new campus facilities. One of these was an area on the lower floor of the library, called the Love Library Learning Commons. It's basically an area with computers, a Dunkin Donuts, and tables for studying with fellow students. As I recall, the construction cost about $10 million. Books were taken out of the library to build this area. Meanwhile, it's a one or two minute walk to the student union, which has refreshments, computers, and plenty of tables. It's redundant, unnecessary, and expensive. Many of these construction projects aren't building necessary learning facilities for students, but instead non-essential amenities.
Universities see student loans as a nearly inexhaustible source of revenue. If they raise the costs of attendance, students will just go deeper in debt to pay for unnecessary construction and layers of highly paid administrators whose value to the university is dubious. And then they have the nerve to solicit donations for a student food pantry while the tuition funds administrators to live in luxury. When the administration wants to give itself a raise, all they have to do is raise tuition for students. It's shameful.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday August 27 2020, @06:30AM (1 child)
s/University/State/g
s/student loans/taxes/g
s/highly paid administrators/high paid politicians/g
There. FTFY.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @07:04AM
Not quite. Privately owned money sinks like exorbitant university fees and expensive real estate don't benefit the public. They only shift the wealth upwards and away from the people. Whereas taxes are primarily a redistribution of wealth (with some inefficiency as you've noted with paying politicians, etc).
Taxes ideally pay for infrastructure and facilities that allow people to earn more money to pay taxes. Those earning too little, pay little tax. Those earning more (should) pay more.
This keeps the wealth accumulation buffered from all accumulating straight to the top, where it does nothing but increase the cost of living for everyone below.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday August 27 2020, @07:28AM (1 child)
That's a lot of detail. Maybe you could write that up and send it back to the school, as well as to other alumni currently struggling to get by :-|
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @02:13PM
I used to work at a different college in a different state and that doesn't do any good. The administration is either too incompetent to respond to it properly or they don't want to. Those management positions, vice presidents, deans and the like are pretty well connected. They are the people that the college presidents and chancellors actually interact with in most cases. They aren't just a name and number on the list like lower paying positions are, they're actual people. And the result is that colleges will create a new position for a new initiative, but rarely do they fire or layoff the manager assigned to it if the initiative doesn't work out, they'll usually get a different make work job elsewhere in the administration. The college district that I was working for had most of those folks in a completely different building from the other colleges in the district making it that much likely to have demands for reductions or for the administration to come into contact with the rank and file that are actually working with students.