Living Wage, Minimum Wage, College Wage?

According to www.merriam-webster.com, the minimum wage is defined as "the lowest wage paid or permitted to be paid; specifically: a wage fixed by legal authority or by contract as the least that may be paid either to employed persons generally or to a particular category of employed persons." The minimum wage of New York State was increased from $6.75 an hour in 2006 to $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009.

But is that really enough? With so many students planning to attend prestigious and expensive colleges every year, there is a question of affordablility. "I plan on going to Syracuse University," says Michelle Dallalah, a junior at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. "It costs around $33,000 a year, but my mom works there so I can get in for less." Not all students are so lucky.

Sarah Luttinger, also a junior at J-DHS, is planning on attending either FIT or Purchase. She works at Regal Cinema at Shoppingtown Mall, where she makes $7.35, 10 cents above the minimum wage. When asked if these colleges were worth their price, Luttinger says, "I think it depends on what I'm going for."

Senior Micha Williams is also on her way to college. "It's between either Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or Syracuse University," she says. Williams also makes $7.35 an hour. "I don't think these colleges are worth it. I think college should be free," she says. "I work a lot and it still might not be enough."

Tessa Grover, a junior at JDH-S, is looking to go to Morrisville State College or Cazenovia College. Grover works at Wegmans and makes $7.25 an hour, but she doesn't believe these wages will help her. "I'd have to work for years in order for it to be enough for those colleges," she says. Even though they're expensive, the colleges are still worth it because they offer the courses that she wants to take. She agrees that jobs should pay more for college-bound students though, because it's "hard for most people to pay that much."

Another junior and Wegmans employee, Kayla Barletta, would also like to attend Cazenovia. "Someone told me it was $37,000 with dorms," she tells us. "I make $7.40 an hour and I won't be able to afford it after graduating from there." She says she would probably have another job during college in order to help pay.

As the interviews continued, the responses started to all sound alike. "I want to go to North Carolina State University," says senior Alex Fischer, "I worked at Drumlins two summers ago, which gave me $7.50 an hour, while Toggenburg gave me $10.00 instead." Fischer thought that the Toggenburg wage was enough to help him through college, but Drumlins was a different story. "Although NC State is a pretty cheap school and worth the price, I might change my mind and go somewhere else, because I'm still not sure." The college he could end up going to could be three times as costly as NC State.

Kenny Schunck, a senior at JDH-S, is thinking about attending either Cornell University, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, or Lafayette College. He isn't sure how much it costs but "it's expensive," he says. "I made $10-$15 an hour, [but] I don't think I should've been paid more, because I got paid a lot more than minimum wage."

Peter Giaquinto, a junior here at JD, doesn't know where he wants to go, but he was looking at Minnesota University. He doesn't know how much it is a semester, but we did some research of our own. Thanks to  NROTC is the Naval Reserves Officers Training Corps program. He thinks Rochester is worth going to, unlike a lot of other colleges he was looking at.