Advice for Students of Pierre Laclede Honors College
The Costs of Higher Education
All Honors College students in good academic standing receive scholarship support. While we might all wish that the amount of your award was greater than it is, you should know that you have earned this support. You certainly don’t have to thank us; we offered the scholarship because we want you to join us. But the chances are that you owe your family some thanks, for chances are that your success in school owes to family support, financial and otherwise; family advice, encouraging and goading; and family temper, longer or shorter. University education requires you to begin to declare your independence of all that; but as you become more independent you should also realize how important familial support remains. Few people “make it on their own” because few people are designed for it.
In letting you go, your family will feel some sadness and some relief. There will be some surprises as well, including the likely surprise that you are going to go on costing them some money. By taking responsibility, you can help them through all these challenges and reinforce their sense of relief. One of the most important things you can do is to continue the academic successes you have already enjoyed. Take your scholarship as something you have earned, and then use your scholarship to enhance those earnings with your academic success in this new and more independent phase of your life. Remember that your scholarship is your financial base line, your first contribution to solving the financial problems that most families experience when their student goes to college.
You can make other financial contributions, and these will also ease your family’s way. You have earned this scholarship; so don’t fritter the scholarship away. On the whole, spending $250 on books is easier to explain, back home, than spending $150 on computer games. And remember, too, that in “giving” you a scholarship, we are “buying” your time. Use the time well. Start out with the assumption that a full-time course load is a full-time job. Right now, the pay isn’t so hot, and there are no tips, but, down the road a few years, you’ll realize the benefits in being able to choose between graduate schools or being offered the best jobs. That’s what’s known as job satisfaction, and it’s worth more than money, but there will likely be some money in it, too.
Meanwhile, what of the folks back home? Well, they will be making some sacrifices besides the emotional one involved in not seeing so much of you. The best way to repay both kinds of sacrifice is to achieve academic success, and to achieve it on your own terms. Take possession of your own education. Not very far behind that, though, you need to understand the relevance of your own financial situation to your academic success.
1. Part-time work, full-time job. Part-time work is no bad thing, and can be a good one. It can significantly ease your family’s financial burden and provide you with more independence. But when part-time work interferes with full time study, you will be in danger of becoming more, rather than less, dependent on your family. Remember that your scholarship support is renewable only if you maintain good academic standing, and that first-year students (freshmen and transfers) have a special need for striking the right balance in terms of academic versus part-time work.
2. The loan arranger. Exactly when part-time work becomes an academic burden varies from student to student, but everyone has a limit. Before reaching your limit, make sure that you understand the real value of academic loans, among which is that they are based on your needs. Honors College and UMSL scholarships are merit-based. They are rarely increased, and we cannot and do not increase them because you “need the money.” To be independent of us, you may need to consider loans. If you take out a loan, invest it in your academic success. Investing a loan in, say, a new car is, in comparison, a far chancier business. The only certainty is that the car will decline at least 15% in value as soon as you drive it off the lot, and will keep on decreasing. When you leave our “lot,” your value will be greatly enhanced, monetarily and otherwise, if you have succeeded academically, and it will keep on increasing.
3. Contributing to your family. The best way to repay your family’s trouble is to enjoy your studies and profit from them. The best way to lessen your family’s financial burden is to know the cost of your education and to understand your abilities to meet those costs through your scholarship support, part-time work, and loans. If after those calculations you do need help from your family, be as accurate as you can in how much you need, and as clear as you can in understanding in what ways (not always monetary) your family would like to be repaid. That’s a good definition of your financial responsibility as a student, and it’s an important gift for you to bring to your family table, almost as important as your academic success.
Robert M. Bliss,
Dean, Pierre Laclede Honors College