History Main / StarvingStudent

* Ewon Jung of ''Manhwa/TotallyCaptivated'', an orphaned ScholarshipStudent who falls in with a group of loan sharks, calculates a conman's loan in terms of boxes of ramen at one point and will go along with almost anything for a free meal.

* Marie Curie while attending the Sorbonne -- which was actually a mostly ''free university'', as it is today. She really did live in a garret in the Latin Quarter, because it was close to the school and she could walk there, saving on bus fare. She managed to survive on pennies and often [[ForgetsToEat forgot to eat]]. She passed out at least once at school (between classes, not during class as in the movie). Her doctor told her to move in with her sister and brother-in-law, both doctors, but they lived too far away from the school and were both party animals in their off hours, making it difficult to concentrate.

This trope is ubiquitous to the American student due to the [[OnlyInAmerica extremely skyrocketed (and still rising) prices of education]] as well as the now virtually non-existent guarantee of immediate payback after graduation in the form of a promising career.

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder: FanWorks]]
* Inverted in ''Fanfic/ThePeaceNotPromised'', where the teenage Severus is half-starved at home and uses his fully catered time at Hogwarts to recover. Even then, though, he has very simple tastes, content to live on porridge and black tea and brown bread, [[spoiler: until his engagement to Lily motivates him to work on his physique so as to be less self conscious on their wedding night]].

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Folklore ]]

[[folder: Jokes ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Visual Novels ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* ''VideoGame/Persona5'': Yusuke is both a StarvingStudent ''and'' a StarvingArtist. He's left penniless after leaving his guardian's atelier to say in his school's dorms on his own. He frequently complains about hunger, walks instead of paying Tokyo train fare, and takes as many opportunities to mooch meals off the rest of the group as he can, though it's almost entirely PlayedForLaughs. It's implied he still manages to make a decent amount of cash from his scholarship, various art contests, and presumably the cast's DungeonCrawling escapades, but he's more focused on buying expensive art supplies to fuel his obsession than he is with food. In ''[[VideoGame/Persona5DancingInStarlight Dancing in Starlight]]'', he's seen growing daikons in a pitiful makeshift garden in his dorm room, and apparently takes cold showers to avoid paying for hot water.

%% * In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', Shino "Sinon" Asada. She [[MinorLivingAlone lives alone]] in her apartment and has to make do with a limited amount of money each month. It's bad enough that she has to admit that selling Hecate, an anti-material rifle in Gun Gale Online that's very powerful rare and of great personal significance to her, would go a long way toward helping ends meet.

* In ''LightNovel/TheZashikiWarashiOfIntellectualVillage'', Hayabusa's college student neighbor's meal plan consists of soaking instant ramen in water to exponentially increase its size.

* The ''Film/SpiderManTrilogy'' movies reflect this. Particularly the second movie which has Peter Parker struggling through college without money, his superhero identity compounding his hardships.