In search of the typical college student
A COLLEGE degree has long been touted as society’s great leveller, essential for entry into the middle class. Nearly 20 million students enrolled in an undergraduate programme in 2015, according to the US Department of Education. Movies and television tend to portray an idealised college experience, featuring 18- yearolds to 21-year-olds who attend four-year institutions and live on campus. But in reality the college experience is far more varied. Only 15 per cent of the under-graduate population fit the traditional profile in 2015, compared with 35 per cent in 1986. A college student today is more likely to be female, to attend a four-year public college full time, to live off campus and to graduate with student loan debt. About 43 per cent of fulltime under-graduate students also work at least part time.
To try to capture a more representative snapshot of what college looks like today, we dispatched two reporters to shadow two undergrads Sheila Suarez, 23, a commuter at the University of Maryland Baltimore County who grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Lars E. Schonander, 19, a sophomore at George Washington University who grew up in Larchmont, New York – on the same day in April.
6.55am. At her mother’s apartment in Gaithersburg, Sheila Suarez wakes up with a start after her 17-year-old brother, Jon, jumps down from the top bunk and shakes her awake on his way to school. After snoozing for a few minutes, Sheila slips on a pair of leggings and a cerulean T-shirt from an old sorority event. She can hear her eighth-grade sister, Micki, getting ready in another room. 7.15am. Sheila - it’s pronounced “shay-luh,” not “shee-luh” - has a physical therapy appointment, one class and a front-desk shift at the Women’s Center at UMBC. After five years, she is a year away from earning a B.A. in social work. It’s also Greek Week, and if she can leave work a few minutes early she can make an afternoon tie-dye party on one of the school’s athletic fields. 7:30am. Sheila gets a call from her physical therapist, whom she sees twice a week for nearconstant pain in her right arm, saying she’s running late. She takes a seat at the dining table with a bowl of cereal and scrolls through memes on her phone. On the wall close by is her diploma from Montgomery College: “Associate of Arts, May 2016”the only college degree anyone in her immediate family holds. It cost her thousands of dollars in credit card debt, which piled up during a disastrous first year in school. “There was so much paperwork, so many things to fill out. I wasn’t ready for college,” she remembers. In addition to living expenses, she accumulated US$1,100 (RM4,400) in tuition debt before dropping out to work at Planned Parenthood in Washington. She returned to college after her supervisor there told her she was “too smart not to go to school.” Her parents, now separated, helped pay off her tuition debt with their tax refund. Sheila has paid for most everything else. For the past few years, she’s held part-time jobs at a restaurant, a construction office and an airport bar, along with the Women’s Center gig, to pay for books, food, gas, car insurance and her cellphone. 7:56am. She gets in her 14year-old Hyundai Santa Fe and heads through morning fog to the physical therapist’s office in downtown Gaithersburg. Her right arm, the one that hurts, largely stays in her lap. 8.10am. The physical therapist rubs her right pinkie, which has fallen asleep, and massages the arm. The previous Friday, Sheila tells her, she was “in so much pain I couldn’t take my jacket off.” The appointments, covered through Medicaid, began in December, after her doctor told her the pain was not due to carpal tunnel from taking notes in class, but likely from an autoimmune disease, scleroderma. 8.20am. The alarm goes off in the GW dorm room of Lars E. Schonander. He shares it with a friend from his freshman year. (GW requires nearly all first-, second- and third-year students to live on campus.) On the walls are posters for National Geographic, “Blade Runner” and “The Young Pope.” By his desk is a pile of books that he says “have fallen surprisingly less than you’d think.” Tuesday is the weekday he gets to sleep in the latest, because he doesn’t have class until after 11 am. Other days, his classes begin at 9.35. 8:27am. Clad in running gear, Lars jogs to the Mall. His typical route takes him past the Lincoln Memorial and around the Reflecting Pool. While listening to a playlist with Queens of the Stone Age and Iggy Pop, he passes throngs of tourists and commuters. He started running in the mornings this school year. “I realised I needed to do some exercise, but I disliked the school gym,” he says. 9.01am. Lars returns to his dorm room, which has a private bathroom. He and his roommate were thrilled when they scored it in the housing lottery. It also has a kitchenette, though he generally eats out. He’s on the school dining plan, which allots US$1,350 per semester to use at nearby grocery stores, restaurants and even food trucks. 9.05am. Sheila is back on the road. With Rihanna’s “Umbrella” blasting from the radio, she swallows an anti-inflammatory pill to ease the pain in her arm. She turns onto Route 200, which has a US$3 toll but is a faster route to school. If she doesn’t get to the garage there soon, there will be no more free spaces and she’ll have to park in a visitor lot that charges US$2 an hour. A white van in front of her with New Jersey plates starts slowly switching lanes. “Do it, Jersey,” she says. “Do it, go left!” — WPBloomberg
Only 15 per cent of the under-graduate population fit the traditional profile in 2015, compared with 35 per cent in 1986.