By Jackson Cooper, Staff Writer

Published in print Apr. 8, 2015

Two New York Times opinion articles have lain on my bed for a week, crumpled and stained with coffee and Indian food—showing abuse from my continuous re-reading. The first was called, “Why You Hate Work,” the second was “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.”

The two articles were marked up with notes made during dinners I had with myself that previous week (I do not have a significant other, so I stay entertained with solo dates, which are cheaper and more fun).

Both articles made me want to spend this week writing about two issues that most college students face, which would be money and its rapid depletion during college.

Student fees and college costs are always a topic of conversation for people of our generation and, ironically, the people who enforce these fees.

According to the Times article, the reason for an increase in tuition costs is a rise in college administrative positions, most all of them being full-time positions. The increase was, according to analysts, over 221 percent over the last 34 years.

Parallel to that is a 2013 survey, which found that only 30 percent of American workers feel engaged in their job.

Now, this is not making the correlation that most of these unhappy workers are college administrative workers, no. This is just shedding light on the rise of job quantity over the rise of job quality.

The number of tenure track positions in universities decreased as the number of college administrative positions increased, this happened all along with many university personnel believing in simply doing away with tenure all together.

If that were to happen, there would be a decrease in quality to make room for increase in quantity.

But what does quality of a job mean?

Tony Scwartz and Christine Porath hypothesize that, “Demand for our time is increasingly exceeding our capacity — draining us of the energy we need to bring our skill and talent fully to life.

Increased competitiveness and a leaner, post-recession work force add to the pressures.”

Another New York Times article, aptly called “The Cost of Paying Attention,” drew a similar conclusion that our attention is in high demand with technology and such that jobs and life becomes almost competitive.

This takes away from the quality of a job and the hard work done on it. The most successful people I’ve met in my short life who work are ones who feel fulfilled by their jobs, able to gain self-worth from their job well done.

In my article about “A Bright New Boise,” I explored that theme of loneliness and isolation in work. Jobs, though, should be fulfilling and not draining. If attention is so rare, work should be where you go to care.

As for caring, we should care when things as precious as our attention and education are at stake.

This means that school should be, as my dad says, “like a job.” Since we are spending so much on it, we may as well get the best quality out of it we can.