Sarah Farmerie
For 1,290 students at Washington University, work-study jobs are the easiest and simplest way to make money. Such jobs are convenient to campus and allow students to maintain their own flexible schedules.
Others, however, seek the benefits of off-campus employment, which can include higher pay and more interesting work environments.
“The people I work with are nice, which compensates for the tedious labor and small pay,” said Katie Cychos, a freshman whose work-study job entails seven to eight hours a week in the Admissions Office mail center stuffing letters for prospective freshmen. Cychos is paid about $6.50 per hour.
In addition to lower pay than many outside jobs, some work-study students are also faced with the challenge of traveling to and from the WU School of Medicine, which employs a number of work-study students. Shuttles running to and from WUSM can take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes, and shuttles are often late.
Counteracting the perhaps dull work some work-study jobs entail is the flexibility that they provide. Students can set their own hours around class time and exam days. Students can also cancel their hours at a moment’s notice.
Those students who choose not to participate in the work-study program, but instead opt to work off-campus, find that the work isn’t often as time-consuming as they had first expected.
“[My] employer at Hi-Tech Copy is very conscious of [my] academic needs, and allows me and other students he employs to make their classes a first priority,” said Molly Sutter, who works approximately 19 hours a week at Hi-Tech Copy at the corner of Big Bend and Forest Park Parkway.
Sutter has participated in work-study for the last two years in the theatre department, setting up lights and doing technical work during the week at Edison Theatre for weekend performances. On weekends she ran shows into the late hours of the night.
“I received little pay for [bad] hours and no social life,” said Sutter, who was paid $5.50 an hour working for Edison Theater. Overall, Sutter said she is much happier with her off-campus job because her “stress level could handle it.”
Last summer, Carolyn Beata, a sophomore, worked selling Cutco Knives for Vector Employers, a marketing firm that
supplies employees to various cutlery companies in the United States. After
completing a 16-hour training
program, Beata was able to set up appointments with clients and to perform 30-minute presentations at her own convenience. College students selling for Cutco have the opportunity to make as much as $10,000 in a single summer.
Beata received $14 per appointment from Cutco but made the majority of her money through commissions. She ended up winning a scholarship for being one of the top fifty sellers in the United States.
“It was a young company thriving on competition, but it was fun and intense,” said Beata, who decided to take a break from her job to focus on academics, but hopes to work over the breaks and during next summer. If she were to work over this winter break, Beata said that she would make more money than if she worked an entire academic year in work-study.
The largest employers of work-study students within the university are the libraries, the athletic complex, and reading/tutoring programs. These organizations provide over 400 positions. Other employers include the business school, food services, performing arts and theatre arts
programs, and the medical school. The remaining jobs entail grading papers for professors, stuffing envelopes, lab research, and clerical work.
The majority of the money for the Federal Work-Study Program is provided by the federal government and the rest is subsidized by the
university. Students receive a paycheck which can be either directly deposited towards their education or can be cashed similarly to a normal paycheck. The hourly pay ranges from minimum wage to $14 an hour.