The current student pay scale maxes out at $4.95 an hour insufficient to cover the costs of housing, food, tuition, fees and books without the help of scholarships, grants, loans and parents’ contributions. Although the University has considered raising the maximum student pay rate to $5.80 an hour, the administration is under no obligation to approve such an increase at this point.

If Congress agrees to raise the minimum wage, the University will be forced to increase pay rates, guar-anteeing a better deal for student workers.

The higher income among students not to mention ev-eryone else in the city could have a ripple effect through-out Carbondale’s economy. For example, local businesses that depend on students for profits could expect to see a rise in spending among patrons, since higher wages give students more money to play with.

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With better opportunities for income, student workers also would be inclined to do a better job. It is difficult to convince people to devote 100 percent of their energy and thought to a campus job when they know they could get a better raise after working at Wal-mart or Hardee’s for a couple of months than they could get after several sem-esters in an SIUC position.

Since SIUC employs more than 5,850 undergraduates and more than 2,800 graduate students to do jobs ranging from food service to dorm supervision to paper pushing, it would seem that the entire University community stands to gain from a measure that inspires these employees to do a better job.

A minimum-wage hike poses some risk to the University, since there is no guarantee that the money set aside to cover student paychecks would increase with the expanding pay scale SIUC has not seen an increase in the amount of federal work-study money it receives in more than 10 years but financial-aid officials say the state and outside funds that comprise more than 70 percent of the total student paycheck budget have always risen to cover wage increases.

If federal and non-federal money did not increase, the wage hike could mean the University would have to shrink the number of students it employs to cover the cost of raising pay rates.

But it is important to remember that such a situation is merely a worst-case scenario, since the University historically has been able to find funding to cover increases without reducing available positions.

And even if the number of student positions decreased, with higher wages stimulating the economy, more off-campus jobs would be available to students, while the smaller num-ber of on-campus positions available would increase compe-tition, causing individual employees to value their jobs more.

The proposed minimum-wage hike seems to create a win-win situation for the University, and we can only hope that Congress will see fit to take advantage of this opportunity for economic growth in the months ahead.

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