There are two very open and flexible view points to this argument between pursuing mastery vs. pursuing a multitasking atmosphere.
The pastor's viewpoint was along the lines of having students take on as many responsibilities as possible to increase their income to offset their costs and to reduce their debts as quickly as possible. When I was asked what I owe on debts, he was surprised to hear that I have no debts from school since my parents had started saving for my college education since before I was born and I went to a state university so it was very affordable for me.
When it comes to making a life decision for our students, the last thing they need are additional responsibilities. They are stretched thin as they are. To ask a student to take on additional tasks like part-time jobs on top of their obligations at school, is a foolish notion since it compromises the quality of the work in the classroom.
My approach at this gentleman's argument towards multitasking is that when you try to take on more and more, you compromise the quality of the work for each task. It's like a smart phone: the more devices you try to integrate the performance of the entire device will decrease (crummy phone, crummy camera, crummy video, crummy computer all in one device). These smart phones will not substitute for a regular cellular telephone without these features, a DSLR camera, a camcorder, and a laptop computer (regardless of how developed the technology gets).
The gentleman, at one point, had suggested for me to take on part-time work to supplement my income to help me achieve goals like home-buying and so forth. But I countered this notion by stating that by taking on additional professional responsibilities, it compromises the quality of the work I do in my own classroom (which is an unacceptable compromise in my eyes).
I can understand that the playing field is not the same for various members of the community, however, you cannot take this approach that you can multitask your way out of things without some form of mastery. You must master something in order to make more of the time you spend working on something. You cannot expect to be mediocre at multiple tasks as a substitute for doing one task really well and getting paid more for it!
It was sort of a discouraging argument to have to deal with since this is an individual who has influence in his local community. And if this is the message that he spreads to the students of his community, then he is promoting a society of unskilled and untalented consumers rather than pushing students in his community to become assets in their community. How do you promote students to pursue a career in science by saying they need to take on as much as humanly possible? You can't!
No lab on this planet will hire a "scientist" who cannot distinguish between independent and dependent variables or address design issues in experimentation. People like that end up cleaning labs, not working within them to perform research. If the focus is a career in science, then focus on the science! Master that first, then multitask later...
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