HOW POOR BOYS AND GIRLS GO TO COLLEGE
"Can I afford to go to college?" asks many an American youth who has
hardly a dollar to his name and who knows that a college course means
years of sacrifice and struggle.
It seems a great hardship, indeed, for a young man with an ambition to
do something in the world to be compelled to pay his own way through
school and college by hard work. But history shows us that the men who
have led in the van of human progress have been, as a rule,
self-educated, self-made.
The average boy of to-day who wishes to obtain a liberal education has
a better chance by a hundredfold than had Daniel Webster or James A.
Garfield. There is scarcely one in good health who reads these lines
but can be assured that if he will he may. Here, as elsewhere, the
will can usually make the way, and never before was there so many
avenues of resource open to the strong will, the inflexible purpose, as
there are to-day--at this hour and this moment.
"Of the five thousand persons--students,--directly connected with
Harvard University," writes a graduate, "five hundred are students
entirely or almost entirely dependent upon their own resources. They
are not a poverty-stricken lot, however, for half of them make an
income above the average allowance of boys in smaller colleges. From
$700 to $1,000 are by no means exceptional yearly earnings of a student
who is capable of doing newspaper work or tutoring,--branches of
employment that pay well at Harvard.
"There are some men that make much more. A classmate of the writer
entered college with about twenty-five dollars. As a freshman he had a
hard struggle. In his junior year, however, he prospered and in his
last ten months of undergraduate work he cleared above his college
expenses, which were none too low, upward of $3,000.
"He made his money by advertising schemes and other publishing
ventures. A few months after graduation he married. He is now living
comfortably in Cambridge."
A son of poor parents, living in Springfield, New York, worked his way
through an academy. This only whetted his appetite for knowledge, and
he determined to advance, relying wholly on himself for success.
Accordingly, he proceeded to Schenectady, and arranged with a professor
of Union College to pay for his tuition by working. He rented a small
room, which served for study and home, the expense of his
bread-and-milk diet never exceeding fifty cents a week. After
graduation, he turned his attention to civil engineering, and, later,
to the construction of iron bridges of his own design. He procured
many valuable patents, and amassed a fortune. His life was a success,
the foundation being self-reliance and integrity.
Albert J. Beveridge, the junior United States Senator from Indiana,
entered college with no other capital than fifty dollars loaned to him
by a friend. He served as steward of a college club, and added to his
original fund of fifty dollars by taking the freshman essay prize of
twenty-five dollars. When summer came, he returned to work in the
harvest fields and broke the wheat-cutting records of the county. He
carried his books with him morning, noon and night, and studied
persistently. When he returned to college he began to be recognized as
an exceptional man. He had shaped his course and worked to it.
The president of his class at Columbia University recently earned the
money to pay for his course by selling agricultural implements. One of
his classmates, by the savings of two years' work as a farm laborer,
and money earned by tutoring, writing, and copying done after study
hours, not only paid his way through college, but helped to support his
aged parents. He believed that he could afford a college training and
he got it.
At Chicago University many hundreds of plucky young men are working
their way. The ways of earning money are various, depending upon the
opportunities for work, and the student's ability and adaptability. To
be a correspondent of city daily papers is the most coveted occupation,
but only a few can obtain such positions. Some dozen or more teach
night school. Several teach in the public schools in the daytime, and
do their university work in the afternoons and evenings, so as to take
their degrees. Scores carry daily papers, by which they earn two and
one-half to three and one-half dollars a week; but, as this does not
pay expenses, they add other employments. A few find evening work in
the city library. Some attend to lawns in summer and furnaces in
winter; by having several of each to care for, they earn from five to
ten dollars a week. Many are waiters at clubs and restaurants. Some
solicit advertisements. The divinity students, after the first year,
preach in small towns. Several are tutors. Two young men made twelve
hundred dollars apiece, in this way, in one year. One student is a
member of a city orchestra, earning twelve dollars a week. A few serve
in the university postoffice, and receive twenty cents an hour.
A representative American college president recently said: "I regard it
as, on the whole, a distinct advantage that a student should have to
pay his own way in part as a condition of obtaining a college
education. It gives a reality and vigor to one's work which is less
likely to be obtained by those who are carried through college. I do
not regard it, however, as desirable that one should have to work his
own way entirely, as the tax upon strength and time is likely to be
such as to interfere with scholarship and to undermine health."
Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no
bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may
have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life,
and will often take higher rank in school, and in after life, than his
classmate who is the son of a millionaire. It is the son and daughter
of the farmer, the mechanic and the operative, the great average class
of our country, whose funds are small and opportunities few, that the
republic will depend on most for good citizenship and brains in the
future. The problem of securing a good education, where means are
limited and time short, is of great importance both to the individual
and the nation. Encouragement and useful hints are offered by the
experience of many bright young people who have worked their way to
diplomas worthily bestowed.
Gaius B. Frost was graduated at the Brattleboro, Vt., High School,
taught district schools six terms, and entered Dartmouth College with
just money enough to pay the first necessary expenses. He worked in
gardens and as a janitor for some time. During his course he taught
six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant
superintendent in the Essex County Truant School, at Lawrence, Mass.,
pushed a rolling chair at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, was porter
one season at Oak Hill House, Littleton, N. H., and canvassed for a
publishing house one summer in Maine. None of his fellow-students did
more to secure an education.
Isaac J. Cox of Philadelphia worked his way through Kimball Academy,
Meriden, N. H., and through Dartmouth College, doing many kinds of
work. There was no honest work within the limits of his ability that
he would not undertake to pay his way. He served summers as waiter in
a White Mountain hotel, finally becoming head-waiter. Like Mr. Frost,
he ranked well in his classes, and is a young man of solid character
and distinguished attainments.
For four years Richard Weil was noted as the great prize winner of
Columbia College, and for "turning his time, attention and energy to
any work that would bring remuneration." He would do any honest work
that would bring cash,--and every cent of this money as well as every
hour not spent in sleep throughout the four years of his college course
was devoted to getting his education.
All these and many more from the ranks of the bright and well-trained
young men who have been graduated from the colleges and universities of
the country in recent years believed--sincerely, doggedly
believed--that a college training was something that they must have.
The question of whether or not they could afford it does not appear to
have occasioned much hesitancy on their part. It is evident that they
did not for one instant think that they could not afford to go to
college.
In an investigation conducted to ascertain exact figures and facts
which a poor boy must meet in working his way through college, it was
found that, in a list of forty-five representative colleges and
universities, having a student population of somewhat over forty
thousand, the average expense per year is three hundred and four
dollars; the average maximum expense, five hundred and twenty-nine
dollars. In some of the smaller colleges the minimum expense per year
is from seventy-five dollars to one hundred and ten dollars. There are
many who get along on an expenditure of from one hundred and fifty
dollars to two hundred dollars per year, while the maximum expense
rises in but few instances above one thousand dollars.
In Western and Southern colleges the averages are lower. For example,
eighteen well-known Western colleges and universities have a general
average expense of two hundred and forty-two dollars per year, while
fourteen as well-known Eastern institutions give an average expense of
four hundred and forty-four dollars.
Statistics of expense, and the opportunities for self-help, at some of
the best known Eastern institutions are full of interest:
Amherst makes a free gift of the tuition to prospective ministers; has
one hundred tuition scholarships for other students of good character,
habits, and standing; has some free rooms; makes loans at low rates;
students have chances to earn money at tutoring, table-waiting,
shorthand, care of buildings, newspaper correspondence, agencies for
laundries, sale of books, etc. Five hundred dollars a year will defray
all necessary expenses.
Bowdoin has nearly a hundred scholarships, fifty dollars to
seventy-five dollars a year: "no limits placed on habits or social
privileges of recipients;" students getting employment in the library
or laboratories can earn about one-fourth of their expenses; these will
be, for the college year, three hundred dollars to four hundred dollars.
Brown University has over a hundred tuition scholarships and a loan
fund; often remits room rent in return for services about the college
buildings; requires studiousness and economy in the case of assisted
students. Many students earn money in various ways. The average
yearly expenditure is five hundred dollars.
The cost at Columbia University averages five hundred and forty-seven
dollars, the lowest being three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. A
great many students who know how to get on in a great city work their
way through Columbia.
Cornell University gives free tuition and free rooms to seniors and
juniors of good standing in their studies and of good habits. It has
thirty-six two-year scholarships (two hundred dollars), for freshmen,
won by success in competitive examination. It has also five hundred
and twelve state tuition scholarships. Many students support
themselves in part by waiting on table, by shorthand, newspaper work,
etc. The average yearly expenditure per student is five hundred
dollars.
Dartmouth has some three hundred scholarships; those above fifty
dollars conditioned on class rank; some rooms at nominal rent;
requirements, economy and total abstinence; work of one sort or another
to be had by needy students; a few get through on less than two hundred
and fifty dollars a year; the average expenditure is about four hundred
dollars.
Harvard has about two hundred and seventy-five scholarships, sixty
dollars to four hundred dollars apiece, large beneficiary and loan
funds, distributed or loaned in sums of forty dollars to two hundred
and fifty dollars to needy and promising under-graduates; freshmen
(usually) barred; a faculty employment committee; some students earning
money as stenographers, typewriters, reporters, private tutors, clerks,
canvassers, and singers; yearly expenditure (exclusive of clothes,
washing, books, and stationery, laboratory charges, membership in
societies, subscriptions and service), three hundred and fifty-eight
dollars to one thousand and thirty-five dollars.
The University of Pennsylvania in a recent year gave three hundred and
fifteen students forty-three thousand, two hundred and forty-two
dollars in free scholarships and fellowships; no requirements except
good standing. No money loaned, no free rooms. Many students support
themselves in part, and a few wholly. The average expenditure per
year, exclusive of clothes, railway fares, etc., is four hundred and
fifty dollars.
Wesleyan University remits tuition wholly or in part to two-thirds of
its under-graduates. Loan funds are available. "Beneficiaries must be
frugal in habits, total abstainers, and maintain good standing and
conduct." Many students are self-supporting, thirty-five per cent of
the whole undergraduate body earning money. The yearly expenditure is
three hundred and twenty-five dollars.
Yale is pretty well off now for fellowships and prizes; remits all but
forty dollars of term bills, in case of worthy students, regular in
attendance and studious; many such students earning money for
themselves; average yearly expenditure, about six hundred dollars.
There is a splendid chance for girls at some of the soundest and best
known girls' colleges in the United States.
The number of girls in the University of Michigan who are paying their
own way is large. "Most of them," says Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, woman's
dean of the college, "have earned the money by teaching. It is not
unusual for students to come here for two years and go away for a time,
in order to earn money to complete the course. Some of our most worthy
graduates have done this. Some lighten their expenses by waiting on
tables in boarding-houses, thus paying for their board. Others get
room and board in the homes of professors by giving, daily, three hours
of service about the house. A few take care of children, two or three
hours a day, in the families of the faculty. One young woman, who is
especially brave and in good earnest, worked as a chambermaid on a lake
steamer last year and hurried away this year to do the same. It is her
aim to earn one hundred dollars. With this sum, and a chance to pay
for room and board by giving service, she will pay the coming year's
expenses. Because it is especially difficult to obtain good servants
in this inland town, there are a few people who are glad to give the
college girls such employment."
"It is my opinion," said Miss Mary E. Woolley, president of Mount
Holyoke College, "that, if a girl with average intelligence and energy
wishes a college education, she can obtain it. As far as I know, the
girls who have earned money to pay their way through college, at least
in part, have accomplished it by tutoring, typewriting or stenography.
Some of them earn pin-money while in college by tutoring, typewriting,
sewing, summer work in libraries and offices, and in various little
ways such as putting up lunches, taking care of rooms, executing
commissions, and newspaper work. There are not many opportunities at
Mount Holyoke to earn large amounts of money, but pin-money may be
acquired in many little ways by a girl of ingenuity."
The system of compulsory domestic service obtaining now at Mount
Holyoke--whereby, in return for thirty, or at the most, fifty minutes a
day of light household labor, every student reduces her college
expenses by a hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty,--was formerly in
use at Wellesley; now, however, it is confined there to a few cottages.
It has no foothold at Bryn Mawr, Smith and Vassar, or at the affiliated
colleges, Barnard and Radcliffe.
At city colleges, like the last two mentioned, board and lodging cost
more than in the country; and in general it is more difficult for a
girl to pay any large part of her expenses through her own efforts and
carry on her college work at the same time.
A number of girls in Barnard are, however, paying for their clothes,
books, car fares, etc., by doing what work they can find. Tutoring in
Barnard is seldom available for the undergraduates, because the lists
are always full of experienced teachers, who can be engaged by the
hour. Typewriting is one of the favorite resources. One student has
done particularly well as agent for a firm that makes college caps and
gowns. Another girl, a Russian Jewess, from the lower East Side, New
York, runs a little "sweat shop," where she keeps a number of women
busy making women's wrappers and children's dresses. She has paid all
the expenses of her education in this way.
"Do any of your students work their way through?" was asked of a Bryn
Mawr authority.
"Some,--to a certain extent," was the reply; "but not many. The lowest
entire expenses of a year, are between four hundred and five hundred
and fifty dollars. This amount includes positively everything. Two
girls may pay part of their expenses by taking charge of the library,
and by selling stationery; another, by distributing the mail, and
others by 'tutoring'. Those who 'tutor' receive a dollar, a dollar and
a half, and sometimes a very good one receives two dollars and a half,
a lesson. But to earn all of one's way in a college year, and at the
same time to keep up in all the studies, is almost impossible, and is
not often done. Yet several are able to pay half their way."
A similar question put to a Vassar student brought the following
response:
"Why, yes, I know a girl who has a sign on the door of her
room,--'Dresses pressed,'--and she earns a good deal of money, too. Of
course, there are many wealthy girls here who are always having
something like that done, and who are willing to pay well for it. And
so this girl makes a large sum of money, evenings and Saturdays.
"There are other girls who are agents for two of the great
manufacturers of chocolate creams.
"The girl that plays the piano for the exercises in the gymnasium is
paid for that, and some of the girls paint and make fancy articles,
which they sell here, or send to the stores in New York, to be sold.
Some of them write for the newspapers and magazines, too, and still
others have pupils in music, etc., in Poughkeepsie. Yes, there are a
great many girls who manage to pay most of their expenses."
Typewriting, tutoring, assistance rendered in library or laboratory or
office, furnish help to many a girl who wishes to help herself, in
nearly every college. Beside these standard employments, teaching in
evening schools occasionally offers a good opportunity for steady eking
out of means.
In many colleges there is opportunity for a girl with taste and cunning
fingers to act as a dressmaker, repairer, and general refurnisher to
students with generous allowances. Orders for gymnasium suits and
swimming suits mean good profits. The reign of the shirt-waist has
been a boon to many, for the well-dressed girl was never known to have
enough pretty ones, and by a judicious display of attractive samples
she is easily tempted to enlarge her supply. Then, too, any girl who
is at all deft in the art of sewing can make a shirt-waist without a
professional knowledge of cutting and fitting.
No boy or girl in America to-day who has good health, good morals and
good grit need despair of getting a college education unless there are
extremely unusual reasons against the undertaking.
West of the Alleghanies a college education is accessible to all
classes. In most of the state universities tuition is free. In
Kansas, for example, board and a room can be had for twelve dollars a
month; the college fees are five dollars a year, while the average
expenditure of the students does not exceed two hundred dollars per
annum. In Ohio, the state university has abolished all tuition fees;
and most of the denominational colleges demand fees even lower than
were customary in New England half a century ago. Partly by reason of
the cheapness of a college education in Ohio, that state now sends more
students to college than all of New England. Yet if the total cost is
less in the West, on the other hand, the opportunities for self-help
are correspondingly more in the East. Every young man or woman should
weigh the matter well before concluding that a college education is out
of the question.
Former President Tucker of Dartmouth says: "The student who works his
way may do it with ease and profit; or he may be seriously handicapped
both by his necessities and the time he is obliged to bestow on outside
matters. I have seen the sons of rich men lead in scholarship, and the
sons of poor men. Poverty under most of the conditions in which we
find it in colleges is a spur. Dartmouth College, I think, furnishes a
good example. The greater part of its patronage is from poor men.
Without examining the statistics, I should say, from facts that have
fallen under my observation, that a larger percentage of Dartmouth men
have risen to distinction than those of almost any other American
college."
The opportunities of to-day are tenfold what they were half a century
ago. Former President Schurman of Cornell says of his early life: "At
the age of thirteen I left home. I hadn't definite plans as to my
future. I merely wanted to get into a village, and to earn some money.
"My father got me a place in the nearest town,--Summerside,--a village
of about one thousand inhabitants. For my first year's work I was to
receive thirty dollars and my board. Think of that, young men of
to-day! Thirty dollars a year for working from seven in the morning
until ten at night! But I was glad to get the place. It was a start
in the world, and the little village was like a city to my country eyes.
"From the time I began working in the store until to-day, I have always
supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood I never
received a penny that I did not earn myself. At the end of my first
year, I went to a larger store in the same town, where I was to receive
sixty dollars a year and my board. My salary was doubled; I was
getting on swimmingly.
"I kept this place for two years, and then I gave it up, against the
wishes of my employer, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to
get a better education. I determined to go to college.
"I did not know how I was going to do this, except that it must be by
my own efforts. I had saved about eighty dollars from my
store-keeping, and that was all the money I had in the world.
"When I told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it.
He pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and
offered to double my pay if I would stay in the store.
"That was the turning-point in my life. In one side was the certainty
of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and the prospect of promotion
as fast as I deserved it. Remember what one hundred and twenty dollars
meant on Prince Edward Island, and to me, a poor boy who had never
possessed such a sum in his life. On the other side was my hope of
obtaining an education. I knew that it involved hard work and
self-denial, and there was the possibility of failure in the end. But
my mind was made up. I would not turn back. I need not say that I do
not regret that early decision, although I think that I should have
made a successful storekeeper.
"With my capital of eighty dollars, I began to attend the village high
school, to get my preparation for college. I had only one year to do
it in. My money would not last longer than that. I recited in Latin,
Greek, and algebra, all on the same day, and for the next forty weeks I
studied harder than I ever had before or have since. At the end of the
year I entered the competitive examination for a scholarship in Prince
of Wales College, at Charlottetown, on the Island. I had small hope of
winning it, my preparation had been so hasty and incomplete. But when
the result was announced, I found that I had not only won the
scholarship from my county, but stood first of all the competitors on
the Island.
"The scholarship I had won amounted to only sixty dollars a year. It
seems little enough, but I can say now, after nearly thirty years, that
the winning of it was the greatest success I ever have had. I have had
other rewards, which, to most persons, would seem immeasurably greater,
but with this difference: that first success was essential; without it
I could not have gone on. The others I could have done without, if it
had been necessary."
For two years young Schurman attended Prince of Wales College. He
lived on his scholarship and what he could earn by keeping books for
one of the town storekeepers, spending less than one hundred dollars
during the entire college year. Afterward, he taught a country school
for a year, and then went to Acadia College in Nova Scotia to complete
his course.
One of Mr. Schurman's fellow-students in Acadia says that he was
remarkable chiefly for taking every prize to which he was eligible. In
his senior year, he learned of a scholarship in the University of
London offered for competition by the students of Canadian colleges.
The scholarship paid five hundred dollars a year for three years. The
young student in Acadia was ambitious to continue his studies in
England, and saw in this offer his opportunity. He tried the
examination and won the prize, in competition with the brightest
students in the larger Canadian colleges.
During the three years in the University of London, Mr. Schurman became
deeply interested in the study of philosophy, and decided that he had
found in it his life-work. He was eager to go to Germany to study
under the great leaders of philosophic thought. A way was opened for
him, through the offer of the Hibbard Society, in London, of a
traveling fellowship with two thousand dollars a year. The honor men
of the great English Universities like Oxford and Cambridge were among
the competitors, but the poor country boy from Prince Edward Island was
again successful, greatly to the surprise of the others.
At the end of his course in Germany, Mr. Schurman, then a Doctor of
Philosophy, returned to Acadia College to become a teacher there. Soon
afterward, he was called to Dalhousie University, at Halifax, Nova
Scotia. In 1886, when a chair of philosophy was established at
Cornell, President White, who had once met the brilliant young
Canadian, called him to that position. Two years later, Dr. Schurman
became dean of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell; and, in 1892,
when the president's chair became vacant, he was placed at the head of
the great university. At that time he was only thirty-eight years of
age.
A well-known graduate of Amherst college gives the following figures,
which to the boy who earnestly wants to go to college are of the most
pertinent interest:
"I entered college with $8.42 in my pocket. During the year I earned
$60; received from the college a scholarship of $60, and an additional
gift of $20; borrowed $190. My current expenses during my freshman
year were $4.50 per week. Besides this I spent $10.55 for books;
$23.45 for clothing; $10.57 for voluntary subscriptions; $15 for
railroad fares; $8.24 for sundries.
"During the next summer I earned $100. I waited on table at a $4
boarding-house all of my sophomore year, and earned half board,
retaining my old room at $1 per week. The expenses of the sophomore
year were $394.50. I earned during the year, including board, $87.20;
received a scholarship of $70, and gifts amounting to $12.50, and
borrowed $150, with all of which I just covered expenses.
"In my junior year I engaged a nice furnished room at $60 per year,
which I agreed to pay for by work about the house. By clerical work,
etc., I earned $37; also earned full board waiting upon table; received
$70 for a scholarship; $55 from gifts; borrowed $70, which squared my
accounts for the year, excepting $40 due on tuition. The expenses for
the year, including, of course, the full value of board, room, and
tuition, were $478.76.
"During the following summer I earned $40. Throughout the senior year
I retained the same room, under the same conditions as the previous
year. I waited on table all the year, and received full board; earned
by clerical work, tutoring, etc., $40; borrowed $40; secured a
scholarship of $70; took a prize of $25; received a gift of $35. The
expenses of the senior year, $496.64 were necessarily heavier than
these of previous years. But having secured a good position as teacher
for the coming year, I was permitted to give my note for the amount I
could not raise, and so was enabled to graduate without financial
embarrassment.
"The total expense for the course was about $1,708; of which (counting
scholarships as earnings) I earned $1,157."
Twenty-five of the young men graduated at Yale not long ago paid their
way entirely throughout their courses. It seemed as if they left
untried no avenue for earning money. Tutoring, copying, newspaper
work, and positions as clerks were well-occupied fields; and painters,
drummers, founders, machinists, bicycle agents, and mail carriers were
numbered among the twenty-five.
In a certain district in Boston there are ten thousand students. Many
of them come from the country and from factory towns. A large number
come from the farms of the West. Many of these students are paying for
their education by money earned by their own hands. It is said that
unearned money does not enrich. The money that a student earns for his
own education does enrich his life. It is true gold.
Every young man or woman should weigh the matter well before concluding
that a college education is out of the question.
If Henry Wilson, working early and late on a farm with scarcely any
opportunities to go to school, bound out until he was twenty-one for
only a yoke of oxen and six sheep, could manage to read a thousand good
books before his time had expired; if the slave Frederick Douglass, on
a plantation where it was almost a crime to teach a slave to read,
could manage from scraps of paper, posters on barns, and old almanacs,
to learn the alphabet and lift himself to eminence; if the poor deaf
boy Kitto, who made shoes in an alms-house, could become the greatest
Biblical scholar of his age, where is the boy or girl to-day, under the
American flag, who cannot get a fair education and escape the many
disadvantages of ignorance?
"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can
take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
interest."