Student Employment Hit By Budget Crunch

The economic downturn has taken a toll on student workers across campus, limiting employment opportunities and forcing students to take shorter shifts at workplaces ranging from libraries to the Office of Career Services.

Evelyn R. Wenger ’11, a student receptionist who has worked at OCS for the past two years, said that the maximum amount of hours each student can work per week has been reduced this year.

Wenger worked between seven and ten hours each week last year, but she can no longer put in the same number of hours due to policy changes and new hour allocations, she said.

“They did e-mail us prior to the beginning of the semester that they would probably be limiting our weekly schedule to 6 hours,” she said.

Other employers are taking similar courses of action to deal with constricted budgets.

Ilya E. Luvish, the production services coordinator at Sanders Theater who handles hiring each semester, said that Sanders decided to reduce the number of hours each student could work.

“We’re not cutting back on how many people we hire, but we are cutting back on how many people will work per shift,” said Luvish. “We usually have twelve ushers per shift, but we’re considering going back to eleven.”

Lewis B. Day, who is in charge of hiring for the technical services department at Houghton Library, is only hiring four students this semester.

“We’re very mindful of hiring and the budget this year,” he said.

Other employers said students who had previously worked for that employer would be preferentially asked to return first before new hiring takes place.

“My department is not hiring any new students,” said Rachel Howarth, the associate librarian at Houghton Library, which usually hires new students each semester. “We just have a fair amount returning this year.”

Some employers added that they are not taking work study eligibility into consideration when adjusting work schedules. Sanders, for example, hires both work-study and regular term-time student workers.

“We definitely have more students that are non-work study,” Luvish said.

Meanwhile Wenger’s attempts to assist others in finding a term-time job have yet to become successful.

“I have referred people to OCS who were looking for jobs, but they have not been contacted by employers to the best of my awareness,” she said.