The High Cost of Working Hard

Today's young adults are highly motivated to seek a postsecondary education because they know it is critical to their economic future, yet too many of them are sidelined by the burden of paying for school while meeting their other financial obligations. Until policy-makers recognize that long work hours place an unnecessary burden on struggling young college students and seek to redress this problem, financial constraints will continue to suppress both full-time enrollment and graduation rates, especially among low-income students at community colleges. The college graduation gap between children of the affluent and children from families of modest means will continue to grow, which will only exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities in postsecondary success. Reducing these disparities would go a long way toward restoring America's promise of opportunity--by restoring the promise of higher education.