College seems to be getting more and more expensive. More students are having to take out student loans to afford tuition and living expenses. If your parents’ help isn’t an option and you don’t want to be drowning in debt, is it possible to earn college credit and pay for college at the same time?
An email marketing company called GetResponse recently did an analysis on if the average internship salary could pay for college tuition and let’s just say, don’t get your hopes up.
They identified the largest four-year public university in each state to use as a cost sample and pulled the cost of one full year of tuition, room, and board for in-state and out-of-state tuition for each state. They also pulled the average intern hourly wage according to Indeed.com in each state.
According to the analysis, Montana has the lowest number of weeks a student would need to work an internship full time to pay for one year of college, at 26 weeks. That is six months of full-time work to pay for one year of college. That is not that bad! On the more expensive side of things, it would take students 71 weeks of full-time intern work to pay for one year at the University of Pennsylvania and that is with in-state tuition.
The cost of education isn’t something that is attainable for everyone and while working a paid internship might help offset the cost, it would take a very long time for a student to pay their entire tuition on an intern salary.
To see the full report, click here.

How Long Would it Take A Student in Your State to Make Enough to Pay for College?