• Costs of participation (20 percent)
• Not living near campus (19 percent)
• Feeling like I don’t belong (18 percent)
• Care-taking responsibilities (15 percent)
• Mental health conditions (14 percent)
• Physical health conditions (6 percent)

Equity factors in here, too, with students receiving financial aid (n=2,181) being significantly more likely than their peers without financial aid (n=734) to cite various barriers to participation. Regarding off-campus work, 38 percent of students on financial aid say it’s a barrier to participation in campus life, compared to 29 percent of students not receiving financial aid.

Braque Talley, vice president of student affairs at Alabama A&M University, a historically Black institution, says his administration, for some of these reasons, recently raised the campus minimum wage to $12 from the federal minimum ($7

Zayd Hamid, a first-gen undergraduate at George Mason University in Virginia enrolled in an accelerated master’s degree program in public policy, is at the high end of the involvement scale, spending about 10 hours a week on student government. Hamid, an aspiring university president, also serves on a student advisory board to his university’s president and works part-time as a manager and brand ambassador for campus recreation.

Hamid says he manages these and other responsibilities and interests by “living very much in accordance with my Outlook calendar” and by using Fridays and weekends to get ahead on the next week’s workload. Sigue leyendo →