Many lower-income students simply cannot afford the costs of higher education. For these students, goals of attending college can be unattainable. With university budget cuts decreasing the number of scholarships and financial aid packages available to minority students, some simply cannot justify the outrageous costs of tuition with a college degree, especially for those coming from poor or working-class families. "Financial aid is the number one reason for attrition of minority students," says George Campbell Jr., president of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Once all sources of financial assistance have been tapped, a students only remaining option is to support themselves through college by taking on extra jobs.

This puts students in these segments of the population at a great disadvantage, as they have less time for studies while their fellow peers from higher income brackets are receiving substantial amounts of financial assistance from their parents. How can a struggling student possibly compete with others who do not have to worry about finances as much? Studies indeed confirm that lower-income students were substantially affected by the throes of financial destitution, as college enrollment and completion rates were at much lower levels for these students than those students from middle and upper classes.

In addition to having to finance their educations on their own, many minorities and and lower-income students are more likely to have family responsibilities, requiring them to work and help with household chores and expenses. In addition to working an extra job, this added responsibility may entail looking after younger children in the family, running errands, and cooking meals. This provides yet another source of difficulty for these groups of students.

Of course, these hardships can affect everyone struggling to pay for college. So why is it different for those pursuing Computer Science degrees? The answer lies in the nature of the work in the field. More so than many other fields, Computer Science requires a tremendous amount of time and commitment, not only in graduation course units but in hours spent on programming projects. Such assignments can easily take up as much time as full-time occupations, making it twice as damaging to those who have to work full-time in order to support their educations.

Furthermore, the act of computer programming typically requires some form of computer terminal, and thus, unlike reading or writing assignments, a computer scientist's work cannot easily be carried around. These students must be able to dedicate a certain amount of time to working behind a computer console in order to successfully complete programming assignments. When public computer labs close at certain times and when students have to coinciding jobs, an additional effort must be made to ensure time schedules will work out.

The fact that many lower-income students have other responsibilities outside of school restricts the amount of hours they have to spend on their studies. For them, these tolls are part of the costs of higher education, adding yet another set of unmitigated barriers to computing.

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