It’s 6 a.m on a Monday. The harsh beep of Courtney Nagle’s alarm clock startles her from a deep, enduring sleep. She struggles out of bed, fills the coffee machine with off-brand grounds and begins to get ready for the day.

It’s 12:30 p.m. and Nagle has just finished her shift at Moss Street Children’s Center. She rushes over to Starbucks for an iced coffee just before she heads out to tutor high school students.

Now it’s 4:00 p.m. and Nagle is going to her first class of the day. The next four hours are dedicated to schoolwork, lectures, and discussions. She finishes the day with the setting sun and goes home to her husband, whom she has not seen once that day. With opposite schedules, Nagle works while her husband Colin is in class, and vice versa. The two catch up over a home-cooked meal, and Nagle is content when the day ends.

Nagle is a 23-year-old student at the University of Oregon who works in order to support herself financially. As a Communication Disorders and Sciences major, she must find time to balance her hectic lifestyle, all the while paying her way through college. For this Portland native, she must pay her rent, living expenses, and her full college tuition, all the while balancing a new marriage, student debt, and a struggling GPA.

Nagle, like many other students who are financially independent, has had to learn how to handle a rise in tuition while keeping up with other expenses. She has had to learn how to be proactive in finding outside resources to pay for tuition and to keep herself motivated in school despite the growing prices. With a rise in tuition and ultimately a rise in total expenses, Nagle and other students have struggled with balancing a chaotic work schedule along with a busy academic and social life. Financial independence calls for responsibility amongst these students.

Nagle has been supporting herself financially since she was sixteen. When her father passed away during her sophomore year of high school, Nagle’s mother moved to Vancouver, Washington. Soon after, Nagle made the decision to move-in with her boyfriend, Colin, and his family; however, not pleased with her decision, Nagle’s mother cut her off financially from then on.

Nagle works three jobs to support herself and Colin, including her part-time job at a pizza restaurant on the weekends to pick up extra cash. While Nagle’s husband originally went to school part-time and worked full-time, Nagle urged Colin to quit his job and focus on attending school.

“My major is not as demanding as his,” Nagle says of Colin’s Product Design major. At this time during her junior year, she picked up her part-time tutoring job.

“She doesn’t directly see herself as a mentor,” Colin responds. “But her background with kids and being an older sister to three younger siblings and partially raising them has made her into the person she is today.”

Nagle and Colin decided to get married while in college. They wed during October of her senior year, in the midst of an already busy schedule. At the time of the actually wedding, Nagle and Colin had to take off from work and school. “We passed [our classes that term], but barely” Nagle says, which wasn’t the first time that her academics suffered. Her work schedule interferes with the amount of time she has for homework and attending study groups.

Colin and Nagle both rely on loans and scholarships to support their expensive schooling. They had to take out a little less than $30,000 each in loans, but for Colin that did not mean solely student loans. He has had to resort to subsidized federal loans to continue to cover his cost of living. Nagle was lucky enough to see her scholarships increase with tuition increases.

Like Nagle and Colin, University of Oregon student Alex Larson also works to support herself. She attends early classes and works at the Annual Giving Program at night, sometimes up to five or six nights a week. As a music major and Oregon native, Larson has spent four years at the university to finish her degree, and she will be graduating in the upcoming June ceremony. She too has had to take out about $30,000 in student loans, but she also has to rely on food stamps to offset her grocery expenses.

Larson always knew she would be supporting herself financially once she went to college; her parents were willing to help her only if she was struggling and needed the money. To aid her tuition, Larson had a scholarship for the first three years of college, but she lost it during her senior year, causing her to begin paying out-of-pocket for little things such as books and gas. During the last few months of her time here, Larson has had to rely on her parents for rent money. Despite the hardships Larson has faced with losing her scholarship, she is ultimately grateful learning how to be financially independent.

“Being on my own really helped me grow into being more of a grown up rather than just coasting along not really caring about finances,” Larson says, who is hoping to pay off her student loans within the next seven years.

Tuition at the University of Oregon will increase as the years go on, continuing to affect students like Nagle, Colin and Larson. In fact, UO out-of-state students will see a rise in tuition in the upcoming school year, which was initially approved by the UO Board of Trustees on March 28, 2014 and later taken to the State Board of Higher Education. Starting on July 1, nonresident students will have a three percent increase in tuition, and all students will see a 16.4 percent overall mandatory fee increase, which the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO) manage. The fees are going towards renovations on the Erb Memorial Union and the Student Recreation Center.

July 1 will also mark UO’s departure from the Oregon University System, which includes the other six state school in Oregon. The University of Oregon will govern itself with a Board of Trustees in all business affairs and financial issues.
This does not mean UO is heading towards a private institution. According to a recent report from Professor Ronald Ehrenberg at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, central control in the university system is the most prevalent form of governance, where  92 percent of public universities use this method of government.

“That’s one of the misperceptions a lot of people have,” Director of Communications at the University of Oregon Julie Brown says. “We’re still going to be a public institution. It’s just a different governing structure than we’ve had in Oregon.”

Julie Brown insists that the Board of Trustees is hopeful for more state funding in the future to lessen tuition increases. The University of Oregon does not want to see students in piles of debt; however, because state funding at UO currently resides at five percent–the lowest in Oregon–there are not many options besides raising tuition.

“One of the things that is important to us is that we maintain the same quality of education for students,” Brown says. “The best thing we can do to help students and their families manage debt is to get them graduated on time.”

The university has the shortest time-to-degree completion, with an average of four years and one term for students to graduate. Brown cites California state schools as a counter argument, where students typically take five to six years to graduate. Ultimately, she believes out-of-state students benefit from attending out-of-state schools, especially California natives at the University of Oregon who make up a majority of the nonresident students.

“It can still be less expensive to pay out-of-state tuition and go here to get the classes that you need,” Brown says.

While Courtney Nagle doesn’t pay out-of-state tuition, she still must find a way to pay off her student loans. Despite the cost, Nagle always new she would go to college, and now that it’s over, she is happy with her accomplishments. She is starting the Teach for America program at the end of June, where she will be moving to Hawaii to teach children in an impoverished school district. Nagle was drawn to the program because of the organization’s incentive to pay off student loans. If Nagle teaches for five years, all of her student debt will be paid off, but that requires a long-distance marriage.

“I’m nervous,” Nagle says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.” But, Nagle and Colin already plan on reuniting in just a few months on their upcoming one year anniversary.

“We can finally go on our honeymoon,” Nagle says with a smile so hopeful you just can’t help but root for the couple.