As soon as prospective students are admitted to UW-Madison, they begin the housing application process. Along with this process, students are highly encouraged to apply for a student job on campus. These jobs are presented as being conveniently located, with flexible hours and a great way to make friends and connections. While all of this may be true, there is one major detriment to working for the university: the pay.
Students who work at one of the dining halls or as a custodian (which are by far the most popular and common job options) are paid $9.00 an hour as a starting wage. This may be enough to keep students around for a little bit, but it is not high enough to keep enough students interested and committed in the long-run.
There is an opportunity for pay raises the longer a student continues to work within University Housing, but these are minimal. For dining, a second-level team member is paid $9.25, while a third-level team member only receives $9.75 per hour. Custodial staff pay increases only goes up to second level, in which they are paid $9.75.
There is room for advancement in student jobs in the form of supervisor promotions, but still, the pay increase is not enough to retain the amount of workers a dining hall or custodial staff needs to be run effectively. The minimal pay increase—50 cents an hour for an additional year of experience—is not enough to convince students to want to apply for supervisor positions when they could find other leadership positions with better pay elsewhere.
Because of this, students might feel the need to seek out other jobs that will give them more relevant leadership experience. The dining halls specifically have not had enough student workers, and it is evident that they are having a hard time keeping up with the demand. Gordon’s especially, the largest dining hall on campus that sees a lot of traffic from students and the general public alike, does not have enough employees to keep up with the high demand. During rush dining times for lunch and dinner, lines can snake around the cafeteria due to many stations not being staffed with enough workers.
I feel that part of the reason the dining halls have been struggling to find and retain enough student employees is that students can easily find other similar entry-level jobs that pay more. A simple search on the UW Student Job Center shows many jobs with entry- level qualifications with most paying at least $10.00 an hour. So while a job as a dining hall team member or student custodian may attract first-semester students and freshmen, once students begin to make other connections on campus they are more inclined to apply for other jobs they know will pay more.
I think that campus jobs offer many benefits that are currently being outweighed by the fact that the pay is not competitive enough.
It’s unfortunate because these jobs really are great because of their convenient locations, as many students don’t have cars to easily travel off campus, as well as flexible hours that cater to school schedules. Also, they allow students to make connections with their peers, as their coworkers will be fellow UW-Madison students, which would not necessarily happen at off-campus jobs.
But not enough students will continue to be attracted to these campus jobs when they know they can find similar work with better pay elsewhere. The university needs to increase their wages in order to compete with other local employers that take away interest in dining hall and other campus jobs.
Regrettably, with the recent budget cuts it seems unlikely that money will be spent toward increasing student wages. It’s hard to determine where money should go, but the university needs to strongly consider rais- ing the wage in order to keep a high enough student interest in housing jobs.
Madison is a sophomore majoring in English and communications. What are your thoughts on campus job wages? Have you or someone you know left a campus job in favor of a better paying opportunity elsewhere? Would you consider working for the university if wages were higher? Please send all your questions, comments and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
