Father Jenkins, 63, would seem like an excellent person to ask, and not just because of his priestly collar. While he is not a parent, he is a son, one of 12 children who grew up in Omaha. And while his father was a doctor, his parents put the dozen children through Catholic schools and then expected them to spring for half of their subsequent college educations, that way teaching them something about value on top of the lessons in values.

So Father Jenkins, a onetime prom king, went to work, starting his freshman year in high school. “I probably had to lie about my age,” he said. He began as a busboy at an International House of Pancakes and then moved to a hospital job and a post office position.

In college, he found work at a slaughterhouse that paid $5.50 an hour, enough to cover his $2,000 share of Notre Dame’s tuition through summer wages alone. He still hitchhiked to South Bend once in a while to pinch pennies, though.

No such path is available to undergraduates now. It would take more than 4,000 hours (or 100 weeks of full-time work) at prevailing campus wages to pay for half of the annual rack rate at Notre Dame today. And while only 30 percent or so of the students pay the full price, even the ones with large financial aid packages work only a fraction of that amount. Loans loom large, as does the role of parental savings, with many families contemplating the right amount to set aside each month while their future undergraduate is still in utero.

So I asked Father Jenkins to point to some of his favorite religious readings and teachings that might shed light on the question of just how much hustle, sweat and sacrifice families should expect of themselves.