Promoting student employment on campus to build skills

On-campus employment can benefit student success in two ways—helping meet financial needs of learners and providing professional skill-building. A 2024 Student Voice survey from Inside Higher Ed, conducted by Generation Lab, found 63 percent of students want their institutions to develop co-op programs, internships or work-study opportunities to help them earn money while enrolled to reduce the cost of attendance.

Most college students are employed. A fall 2023 study from Trellis Strategies found 68 percent of students had a job while enrolled and 41 percent of those learners worked at least 40 hours per week. Six in 10 of all students said they use their current income to pay for college, as well.

Compared to off-campus jobs, on-campus roles are more likely to accommodate a learner’s schedule (such as academic breaks or exam weeks) and federal work-study roles are more likely to relate to a student’s major, helping promote their post-graduate success.

Nationally, 600,000 students benefit from Federal Work-Study (FWS) dollars, which provide between 10 to 15 hours of paid work experience to learners to encourage persistence and support financial needs. While FWS is part of a student’s financial aid package, it’s their responsibility to secure on-campus employment.

Institutions can help bridge this process through making on-campus work opportunities visible and accessible to all learners.

Help wanted: An on-campus job fair hosted at the start of the term can raise awareness of the various opportunities for employment at the college.

Elon University’s August 2023 On-Campus Student Employment Fair engaged 26 departments across the institution at a single event, helping students build connections and putting faces to offices. Ithaca College’s Office of Student Employment partnered with the Employment Fair for the first time in fall 2023, combining opportunities for students to learn about ways to participate and earn money while at college.

Having financial aid officers on-site, like at Eastern Kentucky University, can also help clarify students’ eligibility, what work-study means and which jobs qualify.

Most events last for a few hours on a single day, but staff should consider organizing an event that fulfills various student needs such as off-campus responsibilities and class schedules.

Campus leaders can also reach students in a remote format. Columbia University’s Teachers College hosted a virtual student employment in summer 2023 to highlight the various departments and introduce students to hiring managers looking to fill positions prior to the start of the academic year. Binghamton University offers virtual summer appointments with the career center to help students land an on-campus job when the term starts.

Many institutions offer a centralized, online job board to democratize available jobs. The University of Colorado at Boulder joined Handshake in March to create one hub for the institution’s 9,000 hourly and work-study positions, with hopes the shift will improve access for students looking for work.

Evolving work: Beyond helping students land on-campus jobs, college leaders should consider ways to further develop students’ professional skills and connect their work to career learning.

At the University of Iowa, student employees complete guided reflections on work to build confidence in their co-curricular learning and connect job functions to career goals after graduation.

Employee recognition events, held nationally across higher education, promote excellence among student workers and provide feedback that can be taken with them into their next role.

For managers and supervisors of student employees, a recommended practice is to take special care to support students’ network development, introducing them to others in the office and helping grow their social capital, as that helps increase individuals’ rate of finding a job.

Generative artificial intelligence is seen as the future of work, so institutions are considering how student roles can evolve using or being supplemented by genAI.

Research and internships can also provide paid experiential learning opportunities, so connecting with academic divisions or other spaces on campus that host interns and research assistants can make these experiences more widely known by students.

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