The media industrial complex loves a bizarre juxtaposition. Give them a twenty-year-old student balancing organic chemistry midterms with embalming arterial fluids, and you have a viral hit. The narrative writes itself: gritty determination, macabre fascination, and a young person confronting mortality while their peers are busy shotgunning light beer in damp basements. Profiles pop up in glossy university magazines and local news features praising their raw grit.
It is easy to romanticize the college student who picks up the dead. It frames the grim reality of death care as an edgy coming-of-age story.
It is also a profound distraction from the structural rot rotting out the funeral industry from the inside.
While op-eds coo over resilient undergrads working third-shift removal runs for minimum wage, commercial consolidation is quietly swallowing independent funeral homes. Private equity firms and massive death care conglomerates are buying up local family businesses by the dozen, slashing staff, and squeezing profit margins out of grief. But we do not talk about corporate roll-ups when there is a fresh-faced sophomore in scrubs holding a toe tag for a photo op. We treat systemic labor exploitation like an indie movie about youthful ambition.
Stop buying the mythology. The normalization of underpaid student labor in death care is not a badge of honor; it is an economic trap disguised as a calling.
The Myth of the Calling
Walk into any mortuary science program and you will hear the word calling tossed around like confetti. Professors and veteran directors lean hard into the romanticism of service. They tell wide-eyed freshmen that caring for the deceased is a sacred duty, a holy burden reserved for a special breed.
This rhetoric serves a very specific economic function: it suppresses wages.
When you frame a job as a sacred vocation, asking for overtime pay or hazard compensation feels sacrilegious. Students working removal services—the unglamorous midnight transport of bodies from hospital beds or residential floors to the preparation room—are routinely classified as independent contractors or paid nominal stipends that hover well below legal minimum wage thresholds. They lug heavy stretchers down narrow stairwells at three in the morning, exposed to biohazards and psychological trauma, all while being told they are earning invaluable experience.
Experience does not pay for textbooks, rent, or liability insurance.
In what other industry do we celebrate workers footing the bill for the privilege of performing essential public health infrastructure work? Mortuary science students pay full tuition to complete clinical hours that directly pad the bottom lines of private funeral establishments. The colleges supply a steady stream of cheap, eager labor, and the corporate-owned chains reap the labor arbitrage.
The Brutal Economics of Modern Death Care
Let us look at the actual math. The median starting salary for a licensed funeral director and embalmer is notoriously low, often lagging behind administrative assistant roles that require a fraction of the education and zero exposure to infectious diseases. Yet, students invest tens of thousands of dollars into specialized associate or bachelor degrees, national board exams, and state licensing fees.
The industry relies on a massive attrition rate. Burnout hits early and hard. The romantic gloss of handling the dead wears off around the third consecutive 80-hour week during an influenza spike, when the student realizes their paycheck amounts to poverty wages. Many leave the field entirely within five years of graduation, joining the ranks of burnt-out professionals who discovered that passion does not cover groceries.
Conglomerates like Service Corporation International operate on a massive scale, standardizing operations and wringing efficiency out of local acquisitions. Efficiency, in this context, means fewer full-time licensed professionals and a heavier reliance on part-time students and low-wage apprentices. By keeping a rotating door of students desperate for resume padding, these corporations maintain a permanent underclass of precarious labor.
When we profile a plucky college student working night shifts, we validate this extraction model. We turn a symptom of systemic labor distress into an inspiring human interest story.
Why We Prefer the Macabre Over the Mundane
Why do these stories capture the public imagination while systemic wage theft in the death care sector goes entirely uncovered?
Taboo sells. Death makes people uncomfortable, so framing it through the lens of a youthful adventurer lets readers safely flirt with mortality from the comfort of their phones. It satisfies a morbid curiosity. It turns a grim logistical necessity—disposing of human remains safely and with dignity—into a piece of theatrical entertainment.
Focusing on the individual student shifts the burden of systemic failure onto personal resilience. If the student succeeds, it is because of their exceptional grit. If they crack under the pressure, well, they simply lacked the stomach for the calling. This framing neatly erases the accountability of employers who refuse to pay living wages, provide adequate safety equipment, or respect basic labor laws.
It is a clever magic trick. Look at the brave kid unzipping the body bag, do not look at the private equity balance sheet dictating skeleton crews at midnight.
Dismantling the Status Quo
Fixing this industry requires stripping away the faux-sacred veneer and treating death care like what it fundamentally is: critical healthcare infrastructure.
First, stop normalizing unpaid or underpaid labor under the guise of an internship or clinical requirement. If a student is performing physical removals, operating heavy transfer equipment, or assisting with chemical embalming, they are an employee. They deserve union protection, fair hourly compensation, and robust mental health support to deal with the inevitable psychological toll of cumulative trauma.
Second, dismantle the predatory pricing models of mortuary education. Schools should not be charging premium tuition for programs that feed low-paying, high-risk operational pipelines without transparent employment and wage data for graduates.
Third, interrogate every feel-good media profile of a student working the graveyard shift. Ask the questions the reporter left out. What is their hourly rate? Who owns the funeral home? Are they classified as W-2 employees or misclassified 1099 contractors? How many hours did they sleep this week?
The romance of death care is a luxury afforded to people who do not have to pay bills. For the students actually doing the heavy lifting, it is a grind that exploits their passion for cheap labor.
Stop clapping for the kid on the removal truck. Demand to know why they are working for pennies while the boardroom counts the profits.
