Work is a central part of college. As many as 2 in 5 undergraduates from all class backgrounds work. Holding down a job directs students’ lives in myriad ways, from course schedules to commutes to late night Crumbl orders. For those of us who study education, the conversation usually stalls around the relationship between hours worked and grades. We know far too little about the unpaid labor that also fills out their days.
And that’s the issue. Ignoring the unpaid labor that students undertake limits not only our knowledge of how social class—and specifically, money—dictates how students use their time in college but also our awareness of the skills they can offer to the world.
This is exactly what I tackle head on in my book Class Dismissed. I spoke with 125 Asian, Black, Latino, Native, White, and mixed students at Harvard University and show how privileged students took on unpaid internships during the pandemic, while lower-income students took on additional unpaid labor on behalf of their families. Unpaid labor illuminates how students’ time is differentially rewarded and differently taxed.
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Unpaid internships are seen as an investment in the future. Unpaid labor on behalf of families is seen—when it is seen at all—as paying down the present. Yet, for the latter, the tasks lower-income students took on were neither simple nor quick; in fact, many required skillsets that went well beyond typical, student, entry-level positions. Sometimes they even mapped on to a student’s career interests. Yet the unpaid labor that lower-income students do on behalf of their family all too often goes uncounted and, consequently, is undervalued. This dual effect undermines mobility.
Who gets to weather enormous disruptions unfazed—keeping the ball rolling not just toward graduation but toward a resume chock full of experiences that employers value? Whose time is confiscated by the Sisyphean task of keeping poverty at bay?
That we celebrate some kinds of unpaid work like internships and ignore other kinds is also seen in the experiences of Hannah and Sofia, two booked and busy students at Harvard. Both gained valuable skills and experiences that graduate admissions deans, and recruiters who flock to Harvard year after year, look for in candidates. But only Hannah’s resume would ever tell that tale.
Heading to the office from the Beacon Hill apartment that her parents rented for her was something that Hannah looked forward to every day. Hannah, a blonde California native with a runner’s bounce, enjoyed her time at the venture capital firm during her gap year, although she admitted a little glumly that her hands-on experience with mergers and acquisition was a little more removed than she wanted it to be. She recognized that “some of the work I was doing there was pretty menial.” As Hannah noted, building out the “pitch materials” was really finding logos and contact information at the companies her firm was looking to acquire got old pretty quickly. “Interns get tasks that other people don’t really want to do, which was what I would have expected, so that was fine. But I did like it a lot.”
Nevertheless, for Hannah, exposure was everything, no matter how distant. Yes, she could talk to her brother for tips of the trade. He worked in finance. Yes, she could call on her friends’ father for insights into the industry; he helped her secure the internship. Seeing behind the scenes, however, is what she sought. And to some extent, secured. The research and collecting of contact information, for example, may have gotten a little “boring,” but it provided insights into the career she wants. Familial support freed her of any other obligations, allowing her to focus on what she was assigned at work. And now, on her resume for as long as she needs it, is proof to a potential employee that she already knows how the world of mergers and acquisitions works.
Sofia, a reflective Latina who hails from Dallas, had a different set of experiences. She stayed enrolled, fearing that to stop would mean to never going back to finish. For her role in her family's pool cleaning service, Sofia rose just as early as Hannah—sometimes a bit earlier, so as not to delay her clients’ pool-splashing. Sofia’s job had plenty of grunt work, just like Hannah’s. But hers was physical—scrubbing and scraping, patching and measuring in the unrelenting Texas heat. Sofia’s job also had a whole other element. Like with most jobs, the work Sofia did leading up to the cleaning was just as important and sometimes more time-consuming. That work often included research too, but of a different sort. As Sofia noted, she “helped them figure out what equipment was the best and started buying little things here and there” to get the business started and also to help it grow. Sofia took product research seriously. Who had the best bleach, pH tests, and plaster? Whose prices were the best? She knew funds were limited. She also knew buying cheap meant buying more often.
Sofia’s imprint on the family finances was not limited to the purchasing and cleaning. She handled scheduling, which included ensuring that cleaning schedules aligned with taking care of her younger siblings. As Sofia said, with her head lifted a little higher, “I’ve done some kind of work with my parents since I was in high school, and even before that. It was a lot of writing up invoices, writing up emails or text messages, and sending them.” When a new pool construction job was done, she would reach out to see if the homeowner “wanted us to do pool maintenance for their pool.” She continued, “It was a lot of contacting previous clients. It was a lot of dialing up older customers and just talking through that with them. It was really just trial and error for us. My parents didn’t really have much experience with pool maintenance, but it was a measure that we had to take.”
Sofia was the jack-of-all-trades for her family. She secured equipment her family needed and helped them learn how to use it. And kept track of bills and payments. And completed invoices. And recruited new clients. And followed up with old ones. She helped transform her father’s side hustle into a pool cleaning business. To the day we met, her Venmo picture is not of her, as so many of her peers have, but of a matte, white bucket with vibrant yellow mop and pink bottle cleaner peeking out of the top—yet another manifestation of “the tug between who I am back home and who I am here on campus.”
A saying attributed to physicist Albert Einstein goes, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” This sums up the way work factors into students’ lives. Not all work is paid. Not all work is counted. That, again, is the problem. We need to count it, or at least account for it. Hannah spent her days researching which companies her firm’s clients should buy. Sofia researched which companies to buy from. After eight weeks with her company, Hannah added a respected venture capital firm’s name to her resume with a job title that any corporate recruiter would recognize. Sofia helped her family. But in the language of business and finance, Sofia networked and sourced business. She coordinated outreach, cultivated contacts, and convinced people to hire them. Sofia grew her clientele. Hannah was handed hers, collecting logos and contact information. Sofia was on the porches of clients, on the calls with suppliers, and in the room when decisions were made. Hannah wasn’t.
None of these duties, responsibilities, or skills were added to Sofia’s resume. Yet, Sofia was instrumental in growing the family business and providing some financial stability along the way. One could say same skills, different backdrop. But, in many respects, that would, yet again, undervalue the work that Sofia did on behalf of her family.
During summer breaks, gap years, and even historic moments like Covid, privileged students focused on maximizing present opportunities for future gains. They continued their march toward a career even as many delayed graduation. Low-income students, equally interested in curating that same future or at least one free from insecurity, were often pulled by current concerns—namely, the everyday needs of home—in directions that made such internships impossible.
Yet many of the tasks that lower-income students took on, homegrown though they might be, permitted them to develop skills similar to—and sometimes even more valuable than—their privileged peers. They liaised. They negotiated. They networked. They grew clientele.
Lower-income students, however, discounted much of this work that they did on behalf of their families. Their two worlds—home versus Harvard—were so utterly different there seemed to be no point comparing the two. There was no time spared for thinking about how the skills they developed at home could translate to campus, let alone to careers after college. The attempt to unpack this work is not some naïve way of simplistically equating life experience with work experience. It is about accounting for skills, especially those that employers say they want, and that data show make good employees. States are already embarking on such efforts.
Moreover, understanding how and under what conditions students develop skills, which otherwise go unnoticed by conventional methods of hiring, provides greater insight into an individual’s drive, ambition, and, perhaps most importantly, ability to work under difficult conditions.
We should give credit where credit is due. In 2010, the Common App added a “family responsibility” section for applicants to explain why they may not be as involved in extracurricular activities that take up much of students’ time before or after school and weekends. This section accounts for cumulative disadvantages and additional responsibilities that set students apart. This accounting isn’t about leveling the playing field, but it can provide insights into just how uneven and unequal it is. But we can—and should—do more.
To truly promote diversity and lower barriers to entry, especially as considering race in admission and hiring are being questioned and banned, graduate and professional schools as well as businesses could add a section that asks students to share—not explain—why their list of extracurriculars, jobs, shadowing opportunities, and internships might not be as extensive as their peers. They could provide space for students to share skills and experiences that they bring to the position that might not show up on their resume. Now, some critics to this approach may say that the opportunity to share this information is in the interview, in a more personal face-to-face. This objection, however, ignores just how many applicants are lost using traditional screening measures. We must recognize that a resume can conceal as much as it reveals.
Excerpted from CLASS DISMISSED: WHEN COLLEGES IGNORE INEQUALITY AND STUDENTS PAY THE PRICE. Copyright © 2024 by Anthony A. Jack. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
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