More hours means more money, but many students are not working as much as they are allowed to.
Starting Spring Semester, on-campus student employees could clock in 25 hours per week, 5 more than last year.
Many student employees say they continue to work the recommended 10-15 hours per week despite the increase.
Casey Starcher is one of those students. She works at the anatomy lab at OU HCOM.
“Sometimes I do feel overwhelmed, but it’s not because of work,” Starcher said. “Work is actually a nice mental break for me from the constant homework stress.”
Sophomore Beth Ulrick works at the University Archives. She works eight hours a week, but says she could handle 25.
“I don’t think it’d affect my grades at all,” Ulrick said. “I do all my studying late at night, and if I worked 25 hours a week, I still wouldn’t be working late at night.”
Some of the student employees who do work more than twenty hours are student leaders. Andrew Johnson, who works at Nelson Dining Hall, said said “just about every student leader” works over 20 hours per week.
Johnson, who is not a student leader, works about 16 hours a week. He said employees’ hours stay consistent for the most part, unless they pick up shifts.
“When I was a freshman it all felt overwhelming,” Johnson said. “Learning to multitask between everything makes my sophomore year easier to handle my responsibilities.”
The hour increase does not apply to all students, either.
Students with a federal work-study job earn wages based on a scholarship. Therefore, they can only work enough hours to add up to that total scholarship for the semester, said Lizzie Potter, a senior working at the Kennedy Museum of Art.
“I would love the chance to work 25 hours a week,” Potter said. “I feel like I have a good balance between work and study.”
Potter said she maintains A's and Bs, and does not think her job impacts her schoolwork.
“I could technically get a job outside of work-study to get more hours,” Potter said. “But most of the jobs on campus that are hiring are in the dining halls, and I have a service dog, so I can't work with food.”
Flannery Jewell, another work-study employee, works 10 hours per week.
“I do get overwhelmed by my classes, but having to work typically doesn’t add to my stress,” Jewell said.
Jewell is a sophomore working in the Applied Health Sciences and Wellness Office at Grover Center. She started in January 2017, around the time the student-worker hour increase was implemented. However, she was not affected by it because she has a work-study job.
“If I was working more than 10 hours a week I could definitely see myself being more strung out,” Jewell said. “But the nature of my job is also pretty easy, and sometimes I have free time to study or do homework.”
Only six percent of college students have work-study jobs, according to Education by the Numbers. An estimated 70 percent of college students have a job.
