Can't Write If You Can't Relate: Scott Hall BUS 3810 Final Project: Student Employees

I. Can You Afford to Work for Your School?

Here's an unrelated photo of my brother looking skeptical while wearing a graduation outfit.

Everybody complains about everything. And by "everything," I mean money. It seems like everyone in every financial situation is either complaining about not getting enough from their job or giving too much to the government. Why would we as an American population want more money? Maybe some of us want to buy the newest Ski-Doo snowmobile to add to our collection. Maybe some of us would like simply to afford our weekly stash of Maruchan Ramen. In reality, about 80% of us are just trying to get out of debt.
According to Pew Research, about 80% of Americans are in debt, split between mortgage debt, unpaid credit card balances, car loans, and of course student loans. From the same article, here are the numbers dissected.

Let's zoom in on those student loan statistics.

Okay, so nobody has any money. And college students not paying their tuition costs has a lot to do with that. I'm not even going to argue or go into further detail about that.
I personally can't even complain much about it. I tell people how much student loan debt I'm in and the general response is: "Wow Scott, that's not very much!" Looking at the chart above, this is true. I'm in less than half the amount of student debt as the average Millennial. Only problem is: I have $100 in my bank account.
Even though checking my online banking makes me cry, I guess I can't complain too much. I'm usually working during the school year. I don't think you need a 26-page Pew Research study to tell you that you are more financially stable when you're employed. I've worked a collective 6 semesters at part-time on-campus jobs provided by Utah State University. USU is a relatively cheap school to attend and Logan UT is an affordable place to live. A week away from graduation, I only have a few thousand dollars left to pay my student debt. I often wonder how much I myself benefited from being a student employee. Now I ask all college students: How much do you benefit from being a student employee at your own college?

II. Some Utah Schools
Let's start with my current resident state, Utah. As a USU student, there are no schools I hate more than BYU and The U. So lets compare living expenses, tuition costs, and work benefits between the three schools.

Utah State University
LIVING EXPENSES: Logan 11% below US average
TUITION: In-State $6,250 Out-of-State $18,250
FOR STUDENT EMPLOYEES:
Unlike all the other universities I studied for, I found it difficult to access USU's job classifications online. Luckily I go here. I had to talk face-to-face with the careers services desk and was given a physical printout of this information. Yeah, Career Aggie... nobody's favorite website...

Not sure how to cite all this, so here's me with the USU's student job classification papers

Student worker job classifications are divided into 5 levels.

I (Unskilled/Trainee) $7.25-9.40 This has been my bread and butter throughout my college life. Job duties include answering phones, stocking shelves, and physically light manual tasks. Personally, I've made anywhere from $7.25-$8.25 an hour doing these jobs for USU.

II (Semi-Skilled) $8.00-10.25 I have a few friends with jobs like these. The duties are more varied and some job-related experience is required. Some examples include data entry, supervised software maintenance, and cashiering.

III (Skilled) $9.50-12.00 Duties here are highly complex, and 3 moths of full-time related training or technical experience is required. Related coursework may be substituted for experience. From here, the job requirements become less likely to be attained by full-time undergrad students.

IV (Highly Skilled) $10.75-13.25 The required work experience bumps up from 3 months to 6 months. Work is meant to be prioritized on this level. Example tasks include bookkeeping, graphics, and editing.

V (Exceptionally Skilled) Open wage range Minimum qualification for positions like these include 1 full-time year of experience with specific job-related duties. It says these are available to undergrad students, although I feel safe saying this would be an extremely rare occurrence. Exampling job duties include grant writing, database development, and highly technical programming.

As for benefits, student employees can file for tuition reduction. It works like a scholarship

University of Utah
LIVING EXPENSES: Salt Lake City 3% below US average
TUITION: In-State $7,835 Out-of State $25,057
FOR STUDENT EMPLOYEES:
Unlike USU, The U spares me some typing with their nifty online resources.

As for how much student workers get paid, it's not divided into the quartiles mentioned above. The above chart mentions grade minimums and maximums. These are rated from A-I.

I'm safely assuming the "expert" employees are the ones getting paid in the $20/hr area. I don't know where $97/hr comes from, but I think we could all use some of that action! Like USU, The U offers tuition reduction to their student employees, however their offer is specifically for full-time workers.And from experience, I know USU offers free health service visits to students who bring their own insurance. As for The U-- even with insurance-- students still have to pay for on-campus doctor's clinics.

Brigham Young University
LIVING EXPENSES: Provo 8% below US average
TUITION: LDS $5,300 Not-LDS $10,600
FOR STUDENT EMPLOYEES:
I was able to find some specific job titles at BYU listed next to their given wages. However, another BYU link mentions that those working unpleasant hours are usually making $.50-$1.00 more than the minimum.

BYU takes advantage of their being a private college.Every employee at BYU is being paid by the LDS church. Every full-time employee of the LDS church is offered work benefits from a church-owned, non-profit trust called Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators. DMBA offers health and welfare benefits, as well as financial planning. This organization is mentioned on the university's HR page, which is ironic... because BYU student employees are only limited to 20 hours/wk.
It's funny how vague the website is about this. I had to find out via phone call.
BYU offers the same kind of tuition reduction benefits as The U.
You know, come to think of it. I wonder if USU's tuition reduction is solely for full-time workers as well. Their website didn't specify that. Not too surprised, really.

Results
Choosing which one of these schools has more beneficial student employment than the other isn't exactly rocket science. The employee benefits are about the same for all them. And of course, all on-campus jobs come with the benefit that they're a few steps away from your classes.Looking at the skills required for the higher paying jobs, chances are undergrads like me are going to make the same amount at any of these universities (something close to minimum wage). Therefor, it's basically just better to be a student employee when you're living somewhere cheap. The numbers for living expenses show that Utah is itself a cheap state to live in, but between the 3 schools? Student employees at The U are probably struggling to pay the bills.
Although I can't help but wonder why all these schools have such similar wages, requirements and restrictions. Even looking outside of Utah, all the college I've researched so far are paying the around minimum wage and provide limited work hours. Oregon State University pays students starting at $9.75/hr. The minimum wage in Oregon is $9.75. Harvard University pay their students a minimum of $11/hr, which is $1 more than their state's minimum wage. But even in their instance, paying $59K for tuition and trying to afford living in Cambridge MA... well, that extra hourly dollar is better than nothing.
It's forever up to debate as to whether any of these Universities can afford to give their students higher wages, but there's one thing that they certainly cannot give every student worker: Healthcare.

III. The Affordable Care Act & Beyond
This should go without saying, but getting injured at work is a bad idea. Especially if you're working part-time, considering you probably aren't going to be have any health insurance coverage from your work. I mentioned that BYU will not allow student workers to work over 20 hours/wk. I once tried simultaneously working two different on-campus jobs but was told to quit one because they would have combined to surpass USU's maximum of 30 hrs/wk.
I can already see you smirking as I type this. I'm gonna talk about Obamacare.
Under the ACA, employers are required to offer healthcare to employees who work 30 hrs/wk or 130 hrs/mo. Consider a University full of students. Some of them are paying their own insurance, some are under their parents' insurance, some are wearing knee pads everywhere and go uninsured. I can't really blame them. Their own university can't afford healthcare expenses either. Insuring a single employer, on average, costs about $520/mo.
Also, all universities are required to follow laws of the the Full-time Student Program under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). To quote the U.S. Dept of Labor:

"The Full-time Student Program is for full-time students employed in retail or service stores, agriculture, or colleges and universities. The employer that hires students can obtain a certificate from the Department of Labor which allows the student to be paid not less than 85% of the minimum wage. The certificate also limits the hours that the student may work to 8 hours in a day and no more than 20 hours a week when school is in session and 40 hours when school is out, and requires the employer to follow all child labor laws. Once students graduate or leave school for good, they must be paid $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009."

So this explains a lot. This even assists my personal story about not surpassing 30 hours of on-campus work. I was told 30 hours max by my HR department because they were referring to combining two separate campus jobs; it's just that no one single campus job can surpass the 20-hour limit.

Now before you start feeling bad for us students for not getting longer work opportunities from our schools, there's this graph beside the text. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 30% of full-time students are working full-time and almost 30% aren't working at all during the school year. I know this graph is 5 years old, but do you think it's incredibly different in 2016? And would more students be working full-time if more of their colleges allowed them to?

Despite how relatively minimal student worker wages are, there's a good chance you'll be going into debt if you're unemployed. No statistical backing behind that statement necessary.

The good thing about campus student jobs as they are often flexible with your school schedule. The bad thing about them is that your classes are 0% flexible with work schedules.

For more on the whole health care thing, at least most schools offer a health plan of some sort. As I pointed earlier between USU's free doctor's visits in comparison with The U's, some schools' are just cheaper than others. Some schools are just cheaper than others, period. In fact, no matter how much more studying I do on student worker employment, I already know the answer to my initial question.

Q: Can you afford to work for your school?

A: Probably not, but it's as good as you're gonna get.

If your price of living is low enough, those 20 hours (or a little less) per week at minimum wage (or a little more) could pay your day-to-day bills! I am lucky I live in Logan UT. The only I'm in debt is because I decided not to work a couple semesters... and okay, the out-of-state tuition kicked my butt when I first moved here... (sigh) but on average, most American college students are paying more for tuition, rent and groceries than I am. The fact that 41% of people born in my generation are in $20,000 of student debt is no surprise to me. But as the graph also shows, the percentage of people in student debt decreases with age. Let's hope it stays that way, for my own darn sake.

Even if you can't afford to work for your own school, you definitely cannot afford to work nowhere. It's rather difficult to work and study full-time simultaneously, and part-time jobs are rarely paying something substantially more than a minimum wage. I'd hate to sound nihilistic about the topic, but I say if you're going to work part-time while attending college, why not work for your school? Working anywhere else can't be too different.

If you find a higher paying job that also fits your school schedule, please jump on that train.

If you find yourself with $100 in your bank account, USU is always hiring janitors who can work from 4-8am.

WORKS CITED

Below is my ghetto, yet lengthy and well-used works cited section. Every graph, statistic, or bold statement mentioned above is berthed from the following hyperlinks:

FROM SECTION I.

--Cool graph

http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/reach-of-debt-report_artfinal.pdf

FROM SECTION II.

--On USU
https://hr.usu.edu/benefits/tuition-reduction

https://career-services.usu.edu/career-aggie "nobody's favorite website"

--On University of Utah