Keep students employed
June 25, 2007
The recent minimum wage boost has the University wondering where it will come up with $1.2 million each year to compensate student workers.
And as enrollment continues to drop, so does cash flow. Building maintenance has been sidestepped to compensate for a dwindling budget, and an ambitious plan to revitalize SIU will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even before the first solid blueprints for Saluki Way could find their way to benefactors, the University was hit by a painful blow from Illinois legislators: a minimum wage hike.
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So what can be done? Well, the university will have to adjust.
The easiest way, unfortunately, is to cut student jobs. Or, the university could raise tuition rates again. Both of those ideas are counterproductive.
There are plenty of students who need jobs. The extra scratch from answering phones or cleaning classrooms goes a long way toward rent and tuition.
As for student fees, they keep increasing. They can’t be increased much more without violating SIU’s pledge to provide a quality education to economically disadvantaged students.
Perhaps SIU should look to Lori Stettler, director of the Student Center for advice.
Stettler has redrawn the Student Center budget, moving cash to different places to keep all students employed.
She said student workers are vital to the Student Center’s operation. Without students, it could not function in the way it was designed.
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One way she freed up some cash was to stop the search for a professional position and leave the job unfilled, in turn delegating those responsibilities to other positions.
The SIU job postings Web site lists 37 vacancies for faculty and staff positions across campus. The offers with salaries noted – nine of them – add up to $431,556 per year, if all positions were filled and paid at the midpoint range of offered salaries.
If the remaining unfilled positions, mostly assistant professor and visiting professor slots, were left vacant, it might free up a lot more cash to pay student workers.
Granted, some positions need to be filled. Without faculty there would be no students. But not all need to be filled. At least not right now.
If a position has been vacant for some time, it means others are already picking up the slack from an open position or someone is preparing to leave. If departments can survive for a year without the extra help, it could give the University time to recoil from the minimum wage blast.
One thing SIU should not do is cut student jobs. Student workers are absolutely vital to the survival of this university. They clean our floors, answer our telephones, cut our grass and serve us food. They keep the parking division, the recreation center, the student health center, the public policy institute and every dean’s office on campus running efficiently.
There are a thousand other jobs necessary for the operation of SIU staffed by students, including one that is probably most important to any student worker: the distribution of paychecks.
And most of those paychecks go right back to the University in the form of tuition, food and books.
Cutting student jobs in response to the minimum wage hike is an ill-fated move. Without those jobs, some students will not be able to afford SIU. A loss of even more students will cost this university much, much more than the $1.2 million it will take to keep them employed.
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