80 percent of body students take a...

80 percent of body students take a job to pay the bills...but at what price?

Like a doom of college students, Estuardo Sandoval works to help pay his way by the and of school. But unlike many scholars Sandoval, 20, has a piece of work that takes him only as far as his computer A bookish man at the Art Institute of San Francisco, he helps guard his housing, books, and art supplies through doing freelance Web design for local businesses.

"I starred getting into the Web in high school" he says. "I took the traditional art classes and then I taught myself PhotoShop and Illustrator at home" Now a computer animation major, he earns about $13 an hour designing Web sites for clients he engages at trade shows or by the agency of teacher referrals.

Managing academy and work is tough, Sandoval admits, moreover it's gotten easier as he's gone along. "I have to retain a schedule of class assigilments and work throw outs and how long it will take for each," he says. "My scheduling helps me restrain order to my day, on the other hand you have to be flexible."

For Sandoval, all that hard work has really paid opposite And though he may be earning more than the typical student-financial aid officers estimate that chiefly working college students earn, forward average, between $2,000 and $4000 for year, he's hardly alone in working his way end college. According to a contemplate by the U.S. Census Bureau, 80 percent of society students work to help achieve themselves through those four surpassingly expensive years.

"More learners are working more than ever" says Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at the Center for the close attention of Opportunity in Higher Education. "Over the last 20 years, the sumptuousness of higher education has shifted more onto the scholars and that means they completion up working-and borrowing-more than before."

MORE THAN MONEY

Besides helping to pay the bills, a part-time work at jobs can help you explore career fields, learn time management skills, bring to maturity a professional attitude, and can smooth lead to a permanent position after graduation. Working a limited number of hours while in community may even improve your grades. "Research displays that students who are engageed while they're in college are more fortunate and have higher retention rates," says Dr Clantha Corrigan McCurdy director of scholar financial assistance at the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education.

yet as always, there's a catch. Working too many hours can interfere with schoolwork and cause your GPA to crash. "Fifteen to twenty hours by week should be the limit," says Jackie King, director of federal policy analysis at the American Council in succession Education. "But few students are working in that ideal range. one time you get above that range, there's a negative import on grades and persistence toward a degree"

To find disclosed more about the job/school balancing act, we checked in with scholar workers from around the country

THE PART-TIME PAYOFF

Steve Janssen have a passionate affection fors being around kids. He has five nephews, cousins through the boatload, and plans to be a physician's assistant specializing in pediatrics. in the same manner when he had the opportunity to work with schoolchildren near his campus of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, he bounded at the chance. As part of his federal work-study assignment, the senior exhausted about eight hours a week at Calvert Elementary indoctrinate reading with kids. He earned $650 by means of hour, which helped him purchase his books and pay for his personal costs throughout school. Federal work-study is a dominion program that puts students to work in succession campus or for local place of educations or community service organizations. pupils who qualify for work-study-which is determined from the family's financial need-can work up to 15 hours a week. Pay scales vary according to the specific do job-work and the location. In the 1998-1999 academic year, about individual million college students participated in the work thought program, earning on average about $1200 each.

THE FULL-TIME CHALLENCE

Terra Edwards, 23 of Orange shire California, took her work-study piece of work and kicked it up a notch. As a freshman at Pace University in novel York City, she landed a work-study do job-work in the school's communications office, performing clerical duties of the like kind as faxing news releases and answering phone still she did such a fit job that she was furnished a full-time position. Although she had to take night classes to whole her degree, her full-time university piece of work gave her 100 percent tuition remission and an annual salary of $18500 Her salary protected most of her living charges and her parents helped without with the rest.

Edwards says that working during the day and attending evening classes abounding time was challenging, but she complet her station in just four and a half years, and graduated debt-free "I have friends just graduating now with $17000 in corporation loans," she says. "But for me the best part was that I was able to graduate with a destiny of real-life experience."

The Coep Advantage

Jenny barilla 21, is a chemical engineering major at Case Western reservation University in Cleveland. She's also an employee at an IBM plant in Burlington, Vermont where she examples microelectronic chips. Has Kelp exhausted the time-space continuum? Not even now She's just taking part in her school's Cooperative Learning Program, where observers alternate semesters in the classroom with semester gone out in the work world. During co-op semester observers don't pay tuition, but they do have the chance to earn big bucks--Kelp's salary at IBM is $2040 for hour-and the chance to graduate with professional experience.