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News

More students expect to work

UCLA survey also finds students more likely to borrow for tuition

Cougar News Services

Nearly half of college freshmen in a recent national study said they expect to have to get jobs to help pay for college, and an increasing number expect to have to borrow at least $10,000 for their first year.

The survey, conducted by the University of California-Los Angeles' Higher Education Research Institute, found a record 47.2 percent of 289,000 freshmen said they will need to work to get through college. Slightly more than 53 percent of women said they expect to work, compared with about 40 percent of men.

Nearly 9 percent of the students surveyed said they expect to borrow more than $10,000 to help finance their first year in college, an increase from 7.8 percent last year and 5.6 percent in 2001.

The percentage of students who expect to get at least $10,000 from their parents toward college -- 29.5 percent -- is the highest figure since the question was first asked in 2001.

Still, only 13 percent of respondents said they had "major" concerns about financing college. In 1995, that figure was a record 19.1 percent.

In other fields, the survey found more students identifying themselves politically as "far left," at 3.4 percent, and "far right," 2.2 percent. The percentage of students who called themselves liberal or conservative also increased.

Most students -- 46.4 percent -- said they are "middle of the road" when it comes to politics; that number decreased 4 percent from last year to its lowest level in 30 years.

A record 22.7 percent of freshmen said racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America. However, the number who said they frequently socialized with members of other racial or ethnic groups in high school dropped slightly to 67.8 percent.

UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute has surveyed American college freshmen on a variety of topics every year for the past 39 years.
 

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