Strap on your seat belt and call Ripley’s, because the Wisconsin Pubic Interest Research Group and its exalted leadership in Washington have discovered that college students are working to help pay for school.

Having already determined that 25 percent of Wisconsin’s playgrounds have slides dangerously higher than the maximum 6 feet, the state PIRGers and their $75,200 from your tuition bills have poured over and analyzed a Department of Education financial-aid survey and created a document titled “At what cost?: The price that working students pay for a college education.” Their findings are about as valuable as ice in Antarctica.

While briefly acknowledging that working through school helps “some” students with their course work and their future careers, the report focuses on the apparent thousands of whining college students who say working hurts their grades.

Perhaps the PIRGers’ most striking finding is that, now get this, students from poorer families work longer hours than their rich counterparts. Well, tickle me pink and call me a fruit loop, I am flabbergasted. If only this revelation were known by more students, the usual suspects could finally ignite that class warfare they so desperately long for.

Of course, we live in a world where economic disparity and injustice exist, and most people want to eliminate these injustices. But no matter how far you bring up the bottom, there will always be a segment of the college campus whose parents pay for everything.

Some students simply have cooler parents than other students, and having money often helps those parents afford to be cool. Personally, I think the students who don’t have to work to help pay expenses are entering the world much less prepared than their working-class counterparts. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or money to do the research it would take to back this claim up.

In the most horrifying of all conclusions in the report, working students find it harder to engage in civic learning, community service and extra-curriculars.

Only paternalistic PIRGers would assume that students even want to engage in civic learning (a.k.a. “reading WisPIRG’s reports”), community service (a.k.a. “picking up litter along the roadside with WisPIRG”) and extra-curriculars (a.k.a. “joining WisPIRG”).

Students who have to pay for their education have an added incentive to get the most out of it. The vast majority of working students on this campus spend enormous energy on school because it knows how much its schooling costs. For these students, school is about value: What do I get for what I put in, discounted to factor in the time value of money. Students who don’t have to put anything in find picking their noses on Bascom Hill to be of value, while many who understand the opportunity costs of picking their noses don’t.

Working students have no time to hang out at ASM meetings and beg their student leaders to fund their activism. These students aren’t missing out; they are living in reality.

Fortunately for PIRGers, many of them don’t have to live in reality, which helps explain the hypocrisy that screams for attention in their analysis. “At what cost?” correlates the increasing number of students who work through school to increasing tuition and decreasing state and federal grants. As school becomes more expensive and assistance becomes harder to find, students are left making up the difference working the graveyard shift at McDonald’s.

This conclusion seems reasonable, but in typical PIRGer fashion, it points the finger at government and advocates the dawning of a new nanny state while conveniently avoiding a hard look in the mirror. The amount of membership fees WisPIRG has asked ASM to steal from your tuition check from 1999 to 2002 has increased an incredible 36 percent, out-stripping inflation far faster than any tuition increases.

These couple bucks per student certainly would not keep anyone I know from having to work to pay for that extra slice of cheese on their quarter-pound pirger (sorry, couldn’t resist), but it certainly taints the PIRGers’ credibility. Even though throwing a few cans along the roadside isn’t going to ruin the environment, you still expect environmental advocates to recycle.

Similarly, PIRGers have a tough time selling the evils of tuition increases when they turn around and advocate for more fees to pay their salaries.

So what is this research and analysis good for besides wiping your ass? I would suggest sending your parents a copy with your next lackluster grade report. Perhaps they’ll take out a second mortgage to send you some extra beer money when they understand just how hard you have been working at the temp agency and just how horribly it is affecting your future.

If the proverbial “average student” inevitably has at least one bad semester, where his or her grades aren’t up to par, then WisPIRG has finally provided a service that every “average student” can use. It is good to see student groups getting back to the basics and providing students with real value for their money. Value that any hard-working student can understand.

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.