Nastacia Voisin |
On top of 27 hours working as both an office assistant and an RA, a full class load and field experience, junior Maggie Hamilton worries about credit card debt, loan interest and making bill payments on time.
“It’s continual stress,” Hamilton said. “It’s overwhelming, I’m always juggling things.”
Hamilton is putting herself through college with minimal assistance from her parents, and even with financial aid covering a portion of her college tuition, she’ll be starting senior year with a $42,000 student loan debt.
Hamilton says scholarships and the occasional check from her parents help, but the out-of-pocket costs of attending UP means quitting her job is not an option.
“If I didn’t have that income every month, I don’t know what I would do,” Hamilton said.
Earning minimum wage as an office assistant in the School of Education helps her scrape by, but Hamilton says earning even a dollar more per hour would have a huge impact.
“It would mean a lot to me,” she said. “Every little bit helps so much. I always have to know exactly when I’m getting paid and how much. Even five or 10 dollars means I have to pay a little less interest.”
Hamilton’s story is not unique. University students across the nation struggle to cover tuition costs, pay back loans and manage living expenses while earning a minimum-wage salary.
In his January 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called for the federal minimum wage to increase from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that wage hike would impact many college students, who make up roughly 30 percent of the minimum wage demographic.
Professor Todd Easton, who studies labor economics with an emphasis on low-wage workers in the United States, says a wage raise would help students struggling with college costs.
“If you’re looking at this in dollars and cents terms, for college students it’s a plus,” Easton said.
But economics – and politics – aren’t that simple. Congress is still debating the merits of a minimum wage boost, mostly divided down partisan lines.
The White House and Democratic supporters claim a wage raise would ease income inequality and stimulate the economy. A stiff Republican opposition says it’s a job killer, arguing that raising the price of labor drives employers to hire fewer people.
Easton said there isn’t a lot of evidence that higher wages means fewer jobs. It’s argued that a short-term economic shock – which might affect small business the most – would be outweighed by the new purchasing power of low-wage Americans.
Easton added that while raising the minimum wage would help students who work off-campus, university employment is more complicated.
Like all universities, UP has an annual student employment budget. If the minimum wage rises and UP’s student worker budget doesn’t increase at the same rate, departments have two options: reduce pay scales or cut workers. Locking all positions at minimum wage would stretch funds to cover more jobs – and pay more students – but it would reduce the value of specialized positions.
“So when it comes to jobs on campus, I’m not sure it’ll help that much,” Easton said. “It might help some student employees and hurt others.”
UP already faced cuts to the student employment budget in the 2012 -2013 school year – partly in response to Oregon’s yearly inflation-tied minimum wage increase. Oregon’s minimum wage is currently $9.10 an hour, the second highest rate in the country and $1.85 higher than the federal rate.
According to Rowena Bramlette, director of budgets, the cuts were made in response to “exponentially” expanding campus employment levels.
“Student employment was growing at an extreme rate,” Bramlette said. “There had been a number of years when there was quite a bit of overspending.”
While the surge in student workers may have been tied to growing enrollment, the budget department decided to trim the overall student employment budget starting in the 2011- 2012 school year.
Since then, the number of on-campus workers has dropped from 2,119 to 1,529 students. That’s an almost 28 percent reduction.
Bramlette said that decrease may or may not remain stable.
While the budget department divvies up funds to UP’s departments based on historical and current demands for student workers, each department decides how to spend that money and how many students to employ. Smaller budgets might force departments to streamline or cut jobs, Bramlette said.
The number of students who work off-campus isn’t tracked by UP, but for those students, Easton said a rising minimum wage should add to their incomes more than it will harm the businesses they work for.
Junior Estefany Ramos, who squeezes in 20-35 hours at her two off-campus jobs, says a bump in pay would let her cut back work hours and dedicate her energy to academics.
“It would make a huge difference,” Ramos said. “Huge. I can’t even imagine what I’d do with that extra time.”
