In this June 2014 file photo, a recruiter meets with employment seekers during a job fair in Philadelphia. Because more students are opting to take out loans rather than take on part-time jobs to pay for college, many aren’t getting the real-world experience that would help them as they enter the job market.
Indeed, many students now enter college without ever having held a part-time job in high school. The number of teenagers who have some sort of job while in school has dropped from nearly 40 percent in 1990 to just 20 percent today, an all-time low since the United States started keeping track in 1948.
One reason high-school students and undergraduates used to work was to earn money to pay for college. But one byproduct of skyrocketing college prices is that a part-time paycheck pays a smaller proportion of the tuition bill. As a result, many students find it easier to just take out loans instead of trying to work to pay for their higher education.“You can’t work your way through college anymore,” said Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.