Students Who Push Burgers

Introduction

Minot, a professor of English, has observed that the quality of his students' work suffers when they take jobs to pay for luxury items. He describes the irony of many students' employment situations: they buy what their parents won't buy for them, and those parents then "convince themselves" that their children are learning valuable lessons about money. Minot argues that employment patterns started in high school continue into college, so by the time students begin their college careers, "most students look upon studies as a spare-time activity." Minot concludes his argument by claiming that American education ...