On-campus employment can be less helpful than you’d think.
“This issue with Vassar’s promised pay raise is nothing more than typical,” Sicily McLaughlin, a current Vassar student who is a beneficiary of work study, told. “Those of us who rely on these funds, these jobs, and financial aid in general have never had an easy time acquiring the resources and support that we’ve been promised time and time again.”
Vassar’s increase in rates has plus sides, as students can now work less hours to make the same amount of money. But some don’t see it that way. As a junior at Vassar, McLaughlin now makes $11.10 per hour and works an average of nine hours a week. Under Vassar’s old system, McLaughlin would have earned $10 an hour and worked about 10 hours a week. This means that she will actually be earning $0.20 less each two-week pay period, despite being paid minimum wage.
While other universities’ decisions to pay students less than minimum wage may be legal, it can also feel immoral. A good number of students who qualify for work study, for example, are low-income and, even with scholarships, paying tuition each semester is often a huge financial burden.
“As a student worker, I struggled to take time off work to recover from illness or attend office hours while still paying for laundry, prescription medications, and other costs,” Nguyen, the Vassar student who wrote the op-ed that prompted the change, told. “To hear that schools get a pass to avoid paying students state minimum wage was, to me, disrespectful.”
While study wages are determined by individual schools, this precedent is also set by the Department of Labor itself.
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