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The Dispatch


A Day in the Life of Students in Summer 2025

What are undergraduate students up to when they’re not on campus this summer? Amid rising unemployment rates, growing social unrest and an unrelenting housing crisis, a handful of students share how they’re currently spending their days this summer.

By Julie Hoeflinger

Talking points

  • Students are juggling multiple responsibilities to manage financial pressures and build their resumes in a competitive job market.
  • The oversaturated job market and rising housing costs are significant stressors, forcing students to make difficult choices about their education and living arrangements.
  • While students find ways to create moments of joy amidst challenges, collective efforts are needed to improve conditions for young people.

“Every summer, I have to work a part-time job, considering I come from a lower-middle class family,” says Jenelle, a third-year student at Fordham University in New York.

“This summer, I applied to be a Joy Creator at Nothing Bundt Cakes. I’m also taking a summer course in Introduction to Theatre as a course requirement at a local transient college, and I’m doing research with a professor in Computational Neuroscience.”

On top of having to work internships, take classes and oftentimes squeeze in volunteer hours, many internships are unpaid, forcing students to work another job on top of prior commitments. But even in describing the variety of demands placed on her, Jenelle spoke with great enthusiasm, explaining that one of her new year’s resolutions this year was to face her social anxiety by making herself as “uncomfortable as possible”, in this case, intentionally choosing a customer service job, committing to overcoming her fears.

"This oversaturation is not imagined. Graduate unemployment rates have risen in both the US and UK."
“Despite the obstacles students are currently facing – the ever-growing housing crisis, the ever-diminishing job market, the increasingly unstable political climate – I do find it beautiful that people in my generation still fight for small moments of joy, even if that’s just singing in the car on the commute to work."

Each of the three US-based students I spoke to reported a combination of summer classes, internships and additional jobs to pay bills. Maggie, a rising sophomore at the University of Tennessee (UT), shared what her summer looks like this year. “I’m studying public affairs, which is what led me to my current job, this internship that I have right now [with] the UT’s Institute for Public Service,” she explains, not failing to communicate her passion for learning about local government.

Maggie also works at a local insurance agency, a role she's held for three and a half years. “That job has just been great for me because… first, it pays well,” she chuckles candidly. “And I can work from home, and it's [relatively] flexible, so I'm able to work remotely from anywhere, [allowing me to] continue the job during school.”

Meanwhile, Faith from the University of Michigan is headed into her final year of a Human-Centered Engineering Design degree. After the completion of a summer class in the first half of summer, she’s now working four days a week at a quality engineering internship with an automotive parts manufacturer.

“I spend over an hour driving between home and work each day, and my favorite way to pass the time is singing loudly in the car. In my free time, I’m hanging out with loved ones, working with my classmates to file a provisional patent for a class project, getting ready for the upcoming school year as the Public Relations Coordinator for my local chapter, and soaking up the sun.”

Faith’s schedule revealed a striking truth: free time isn’t exactly free time. Do students genuinely have the time or energy for personal hobbies mid all the commitments?

“Most of my summer’s spent working full-time,” Maggie explains, “but when I do have time to do other things, I try to get dinner with my friends or family, and I love to read and get outside and be active. But it's hard when I'm working 8-5 every day,” she says with a laugh.

Meanwhile, Jenelle says her favorite hobbies in summer are running, reading outside and “staying up to date with politics”. Many students, even those outside of these interviews, have also mentioned politics at one point or another.

“I feel like I’ve been neglecting nurturing my hobbies this summer, though, as I’m doing what I can to build my resume. As you may know, the Computer Science field is oversaturated, and the current administration is making it increasingly difficult for lower income students to earn higher education with the new ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that just passed,” says Janelle.

“With all these obstacles, I’m trying to stay as committed as possible to my education and gaining the experience I need to be successful in this very strange climate that’s breeding itself.”

“Oversaturated” is also a word that crops up time and time again in these conversations, and one I’ve heard among my own peers more times than I can count in the past several years.

This oversaturation is not imagined. Graduate unemployment rates have risen in both the US and UK. According to AP news, American graduates are facing one of the toughest job markets in over a decade, and the unemployment rate for recent graduates has reached its highest level in over 12 years, exceeding the overall unemployment rate in the US.

I asked Maggie if her peers were dealing with similar pressures or if her situation was in the minority.

“Actually, all my friends are working during the summer to some extent. And at UT, there's a housing crisis, so there's not enough on-campus housing. As a second-year, I have to think, ‘Well, I need to pay for my apartment, tuition and billing,’ so that has been a big thing for me of, ‘Oh, okay, I really need to figure out how to pay for this!’

“That has been really, very stressful… It's something I never thought I'd have to figure out this young, but I feel grateful that I'm learning from other family members’ mistakes and what they wish they’d done differently.”

UT is not the only institution facing a housing crisis, and the student housing crisis is not something new. One survey in 2020 found that, of 195,000 students surveyed, a whopping 48 percent reported experiencing some kind of housing insecurity and 14 percent had experienced homelessness. Nonetheless, student rent and tuition continue to soar above household income, pushing many students to live off-campus with relatives or drop out altogether.

If pressures weren’t already high enough when I was entering the undergraduate scene in 2017, circumstances have only amplified in the years since. Even as a graduate of a Master’s Programme in London that ended just under two years ago, many of my classmates struggled to find jobs within our field, and some still not being able to do so after a year of the course’s completion. Several of us voiced feeling ill-advised on just how difficult the current job market is to break into, despite having two, three and even four advanced degrees. Two of my personal friends from the course have now turned their efforts towards applying to PhD programs just to be able to stay in the UK on a visa.

Despite the obstacles students are currently facing – the ever-growing housing crisis, the ever-diminishing job market, the increasingly unstable political climate – I do find it beautiful that people in my generation still fight for small moments of joy, even if that’s just singing in the car on the commute to work. Yet we certainly can, and must, do better for our young people – a rising unemployment rate, especially within a higher education demographic, hurts everyone in the long-run.