Poll: College grads trying to stay afloat

WASHINGTON (AP) — Students scattering for the summer are worried they’ll be graduating from schools of higher learning only to find themselves snagged in the school of hard knocks.

That’s what happened to Josh Donahue, 23, who went on food stamps two weeks after leaving Oregon State University with an economics degree that he hoped to use for a job as a financial analyst. He’s living with his aunt and uncle in Grants Pass, Ore., and looking for even a menial job.

“It feels like really, really bad, terrible timing,” he says. “A degree in economics doesn’t really prepare you to understand the economy very well.”

Timing is much on the minds of students as they size up their opportunities in the worst economy their generation has known, an AP-mtvU poll at 40 college campuses finds. Young men and women are anxious not only about their finances and job prospects after graduation, but about the pressures facing parents, normally the rock of their existence.

Nearly one in five polled students reported that at least one parent had lost a job in the past year.

Many young people are taking refuge in graduate school, buying time until the economy improves even as they amass more debt from student loans. But others who hoped to go to grad school have had to defer it because of the expense.

At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., systems engineering junior Adrian Solomon, 21, of Virginia Beach, Va., said his mother, who is single and rearing his 16-year-old sister as well as a foster child, is “trying to support me sometimes, when I need it.”

At other times Mom has asked him for money, and “I would do what I can to help her out.”

Jake Lear, 21, of Warrenton, Va., a digital-arts major at George Mason, worked three jobs at a time through the past semester and is doing one of them full time this summer — a resident adviser helping to look after freshmen in dorms — because he gets free housing. His parents work for a federal contractor that shrank its work force and eliminated 401(k) matching contributions. The school is in suburban northern Virginia outside Washington.

For all the apprehension, there’s also a lot of determination and spirit. Students don’t expect an easy ride through college and seem to believe their education will pay off — eventually.

The poll explored matters of money and mind, surveying students on financial pressures, job possibilities, stress and depression. Among the findings on the economy:

U22 percent of students said they worry a lot about having enough cash to get through a typical week at school, and more — fully one-third — said they really worry about the finances of their parents.

UNearly one in five changed plans this year and decided to attend graduate or professional school after college because an undergraduate degree might not be enough to get them a job.

U11 percent of those whose parents lost a job veered away from grad school because they could not afford it.

U32 percent said financial worries have a lot of impact on the stress they’re under, up from 27 percent last spring.