Or you could work while going to school, skip the partying, ride a bicycle, and keep your debt to a repayable level.
I am 22 and I have a real job. During school, I washed a lot of dishes, picked up a lot of construction site refuse, drove a lot of nails, cut a lot of boards, and cleaned up a lot of spyware. Now I write software, for more than the spyware and dishwashing, but less than the construction. I'll still be able to repay my loans when they come due.
You don't have to live like a monk. Save 20% of your income always (don't make much? don't worry you won't be saving much. That 20% is your money don't give it away.) and start practicing at networking early. You probably wont do it washing dishes, but maybe hammering nails. Construction is for a client who you can meet, washing dishes you're in the kitchen.
Talk to the people who need your services, talk to people because they might know someone who needs your services. Work out a way you can bring your talents to help others for money. I've never been without work and it's not because I'm particularly bright. I'm good at what I do, I love what I do (most of the time), and I talk about my work because of that.
I hear my friends talk about not finding any work because of "the economy". I yell at them, I've never been busier. Most of it is routine work, but for the hard sells it comes down to a simple fact. My clients hire me so I can save them money long term. So I stay busy.
I don't see how that can translate over to retail. But I can for many other professions. The writers, the sectaries, the office managers, for big companies for small for, for non profits. Chances are you can do the job for less money and with an added technical twist. They can pay you 3/4th as much, and you can make some pretty excel reports that will blow them away.
It's never that simple, but that's the jist I've seen working. But what do I know? I'm a whiney 25 year old.
"I hear my friends talk about not finding any work because of "the economy". I yell at them, I've never been busier."
Not to trivialize the value of, well, adding value, but there's a lot of luck involved too. It was an awakening recently when I tried to refer a bunch of HN people into Google - folks whose resumes and comments looked pretty good to me - and none of them even got past the prescreen. My own hiring process went remarkably smoothly, and my recruiter hustled me between the different phases with little delay. It was a surprise to me that so many people who I thought were otherwise good candidates didn't even make it to the initial phone screen.
I've never had trouble finding a job either, but maybe I'm just lucky. It's sorta hard to reconcile the ease of getting hired/doing the job vs. the difficulty of doing something like starting my own company (which I've also tried, and failed miserably at). Maybe for some people, those talents are just reversed...or worse, they're bad at both of them.
It depends on what you're doing and where you're going. I suppose that might be reasonable at a big state school with relatively low tuition for a CS degree, which makes sense at this website. OTOH, if you're going to a private school or a professional school, your part time job doesn't amount to squat compared to tuition.
In almost any imaginable scenario, you have it worse today than some 50 year old had it in the seventies.
You hit it right on. Part-time jobs, full-time in the summer and over winter break, big state school for Math and CS. You're also absolutely right that the 50 year old had an easier time of it, but the rising cost of schooling is a whole 'nother beast.
I am 22 and I have a real job. During school, I washed a lot of dishes, picked up a lot of construction site refuse, drove a lot of nails, cut a lot of boards, and cleaned up a lot of spyware. Now I write software, for more than the spyware and dishwashing, but less than the construction. I'll still be able to repay my loans when they come due.