My son can't get a job at his college because...

Two words to beat the system. The movie "Soul Man"!

 

I would love to hear that phone call.
"Yes, that is right...my son has told you the correct information that both my wife and I are dead. Good day."

 

Exactly this. If someone goes in out of high school and works their way through undergrad with all of the tuition assistance programs for free, then gets accepted to med school that is literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in education all paid for(actually, you're being paid the whole time), usually with a 6-8 year commitment after completion (usually Someone coming out of med school would have 8 years in service as at least an O3 making $6,000/mth in base pay plus $2,000/mth in in housing for an area like ATL. everything else. Medical pay depends on the specialty but 4 year obligations are around 225K for general practitioner to 400K for surgeons. So $155K/yr isn't super high pay for a family doctor but considering you'll only have a 6ish year commitment to pay off all those years of school it seems worth it.

If you do the math of 4yr under grad, 4yr med school, 4yr residency, 6-8 year commitment payback; you're 0-2 years away from military retirement. At that point you're making around 8-10K a month in base pay, 2-2,500 in housing allowance, plus everything else you can expect to be making 200K+ by the time you get into actual practice. Do it for an additional 0-10 years and retire with a 5-6K monthly income and and move into the civilian doctor force. 60K/year in military retirement plus all of your schooling for free is pretty much a no brainer, wish I had a bigger brain when I was 17.

 

That list left off Marten Transport.

Yes, I can be reimbursed for taking online courses. Problem is finding the time to spare.

Marten offers a yearly scholarships for employee's kids, but not employee's spouse. I'm working on that.

 

From what you describe, it sounds like your son applied for a position which was designated as a work-study. These are positions which are partially controlled by the financial aid department, and are paid for by federal dollars NOT by the department or college. Because they are financed by the federal government with the intention of helping people from more economically deprived backgrounds, there are a lot of restrictions on who is eligible. If you look at the federal poverty levels, they are so low that most students with working parents wouldn't be eligible. That being said, I would be surprised if the college did not have departmental study salary budgets, allowing them to hire "gifted" students as lab assistants for courses like chemistry, biology, etc. Have your son ask the faculty of the departments that most align with his interests. Additionally, it would be worth reaching out to any work-based learning coordinator a the school. They have grant money to pay companies to take on students as paid interns and co-ops.

 

Has your son considered exotic dancing?
I seem to recall most of the strippers I met years back saying they were working their way through college.