Fred Kruger
During the 1960s, employment among college students was becoming more and more evident with the fraction of college students employed growing through the mid-1980s. Increased college costs and tuition are likely to attribute to such a trend, but also social and cultural trends such as more flexible classroom hours and the desire for independence are likely to have had some influence in the increase of employment among college students. Even social issues such as the women’s rights movement created more employment opportunities for students by enabling female students to go outside of their traditional roles in society. One might think that coupling employment with higher education would make completing one’s education more difficult. However, a 1991 analysis indicated that students who were working in college during the 1960s did not receive any lower grades than nonworking students. (1)
As Fred Kruger, a ’65 graduate of Concordia College, mentioned in his interview in 2014, “I worked almost all my way through college, either on campus or downtown. And so that was a part of how I paid my way through here.” (2) A possible explanation for the increasing number of employed college students can be due to the increase in college costs and tuition. It was reported that before the 1960s, student fees at Concordia accounted for nearly 85 percent of the operating budget, shifting to roughly 80 percent of the operating budget between 1965 and 1975. (3) This information shows that Concordia relied quite heavily on student tuition, enrollment, and fees during the 1960s, contributing to the increase in student tuition and fees that were necessary to cover the heightened costs of the college.
Concordia’s dependency on student fees and tuition was a contributing factor to its increased prices, not to mention the worsening inflation that began to affect the nation in the 1970s. “While enrollments in Lutheran colleges increased 54 percent between 1960 and 1970, costs rose 223 percent.” (4) This shows that although college enrollment was increasing, it was being outpaced by costs, which would likely result in an increase in tuition and fees. These increased costs are likely to have encouraged students to seek outside financial support through employment.
Social and cultural factors may have also encouraged students to seek employment. Students may have increased earnings compared to other workers as a result of colleges becoming more flexible with class and exam scheduling, thus enabling college students to hold jobs that require more working hours. (5) Even broader social issues such as the women’s movement could contribute to the increased opportunity and responsibility of male and female students. Young adolescents at this time also could have been motivated to seek employment because of a desire to achieve independence. (6)
One may question whether employment in college is always beneficial to the student or not. Kruger worked both on-campus at the commons and off-campus at Martinson’s Jewelry in downtown Moorhead (7) and according to a study by Ehrenberg and Sherman, there is a striking asymmetry found between students who work on-campus opposed to students who work off-campus. (8) Students who are employed on-campus are more likely to be successful in their academics—graduating and continuing further schooling—than those students who work-off campus.
Along with this knowledge regarding on- and off-campus employment, four other tentative conclusions emerged from the partial analyses done by Stern and Nakata: (a) students who work in college earn more money within the first few years following graduation than they earn in college; (b) students who do work in college do not receive lower grades than those who do not work; (c) student who work in college are more likely to take longer to finish their programs and are more likely to drop out than nonworkers; (d) working has a more positive correlation with school performance when the job is more closely related to school. (9) With this in mind, one can see the possible impact that employment could have on college students, such as Fred Kruger, who work both on- and off-campus to pay their way through schooling in the 1960s.
Essay by Morgan Gunderson
(1) David Stern, and Yoshi-Fumi Nakata, "Paid Employment among U.S. College Students: Trends, Effects, and Possible Causes," The Journal of Higher Education 62, no. 1 (1991): 40, accessed December 5, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1982099.
(2) Fred Kruger, interview by Sarah Parries and Brandon Cottrell, October 10, 2014, transcript, 1.
(3) Carroll L. Engelhardt On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College (1891-1991) (Moorhead, Minn.: College, 1991), 222, 256.
(4) Engelhardt, Firm Foundation, 256.
(5) Stern and Nakata, "Paid Employment," 40.
(6) Stern and Nakata, "Paid Employment," 41.
(7) Fred Kruger, interview, transcript, 1.
(8) R. Ehrenberg and D. Sherman, "Employment while in College, Academic Achievement, and Postcollege Outcomes: A Summary of Results," Journal of Human Resources 22 (1987): 1-23, quoted in Stern and Nakata, "Paid Employment," 33-34.
(9) Stern and Nakata, "Paid Employment,” 34.