I see a lot of people complaining when NYT articles show up -- but they are often mistakenly thinking it's a paywall. It's not, it's just a free registration barrier. Even when the NYT goes metered in 2011, free members will still be allowed a certain amount of articles per month (similar to the Financial Times articles).
Moreover though, I'd like to point out that most newspapers are extremely affordable for students - almost every publication offers a generous student discount.
When I was a student I had subscriptions to the WSJ and Foreign Affairs because they were pretty cheap, WSJ was something like $15 for 3.75 months and Foreign Affairs was $20 for an entire year. NYTimes Student (M-F) is only $0.50 an issue. The Economist costs only $24 for 3.75 months... or $1.60 an issue. In almost all cases you end up saving between 70-80% when using the student subscriptions.
Plus you can keep subscribing at the same rates even after graduating -- you might have to fill in some bogus information about what course you are taking but it still works.
So, I don't know. I feel like the cost of student subscriptions isn't a whole lot and in that case maybe it's worth subscribing just to be well informed about the world. Certain pubs like the WSJ, FT, or Foreign Affairs will probably never be totally free and in that case, given the small fee they charge I'd be willing to trade eating pizza one day for ramen.