At Mine, we know lots about college students and their financial habits. So, at the end of last semester, we decided to dig deeper and survey students in order to get a clearer understanding of how they view their finances while in school. The findings? College students know how to get creative and support themselves, but barriers to financial independence still loom large. That’s where Mine comes in, but first, let’s take a closer look at the data.
Most college students earn income
According to our study, 64% of students report earning money during their time in school. This is a pretty big umbrella, including students who work full time, part time, as gig workers, or even just those who have low-key side hustles to make extra money.
To us at Mine, this shows that today’s college students are super diligent and resourceful. It isn’t always easy, but in an era when college tuition and costs of living are at all time highs, a little extra money can go a long way.
Traditional jobs are still popular
Of those 64% of students who earn money while at school, 45% of them are working full-time or part-time jobs. This might come as a surprise at a time when it seems like everyone is making money online or on their own time, but there’s clearly still a market for earning money in college in a full-time or part-time role.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but we see this as evidence that Gen Z isn’t just the lazy generation they’re lambasted as. They’re working, and while some are taking less traditional employment paths, many are working the same way that older generations have.
Gig work is popular too
Overall, 19% of students surveyed reported earning some sort of income from working in the gig economy for companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Postmates. As a student, having the flexibility to choose your own hours and effectively work for yourself is attractive.
One thing is clear here on our end: the gig economy is changing how students are able to earn money while in college. Nearly 1 in 5 students earning some sort of gig labor is significant, even if many students are still opting for more traditional employment.
Few students achieve total financial independence
It may not come as a huge surprise, but only 10% of Gen Z students report paying their own rent while in college. Even on and around college campuses, rent can be a huge expense, so it’s not entirely surprising that 90% of students pay for housing via parents, financial aid, scholarships, or other means.
Ultimately, this reflects to us that many of the jobs college students hold aren’t enough to cover the full cost of living where they go to college. Living costs are too high, salaries for student jobs aren’t high enough, or students may just have an easier time finding money for rent from other sources than they do post-college.
The bottom line
The data here is clear – college students are good at finding ways to earn money, and they’re motivated to do so even though many aren’t burdened with the cost of housing on a month to month basis.
But there’s a larger story here as well. Tons of college students are finding ways to make money while in school, but many of them aren’t quite at the stage of financial independence where they’re able to start paying rent and rates of financial literacy are still quite low among US college students.
This is why a financial platform like Mine has the ability to be so transformative. With so many college students bringing in income on their own, learning how to budget, learning how to build credit, and learning how to save and invest can be the difference between financial independence and relying on outside sources to make ends meet.
