Running head: THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

The Controversy on Campus Working

Lingjun Chen
Purdue University

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

The Controversy on Campus Working

Abstract
This paper is mainly focused on answering the question of whether it is beneficial for
students to work on campus. I adopted three different articles from three different
perspectives (news journalist, university student, and professor in the field of education).
Megan (2014) claimed that student employees had played a significant role in the
functioning of Ohio University. She mentioned in the article that many places on OU's
campus hired student workers and some of those places would not operate and function
well when certain numbers of student workers were absent. Besides, student payments
had the potential to be raised if students performed well at work. However, Reynolds
(2014) on the other sides argued that the salary a student received from the university was
far from covering his/her bills. Palmer and Bray (2008) in the end, gave a more moderate
and intermediate view on the topic where they compared the pros and cons of student
work on campus in the journal. By analyzing these three different perspectives towards
my research topic, I discovered that the answer for the previous question, whether it is
beneficial for students to work on campus, varies depends on how people define the word
" beneficial". If a person agrees that working experiences are much more important for
him or her, then he/she is more likely to regard work on campus as advantageous than
those who only care about their grades and attendances in class.
Key words: student employment, study and work, student attendance.
In my last paper, I focused on interviewing two friends of mine who are currently
working on campus. And the message I received from them was that working was
definitely helpful for both students' personalities and their future careers. Nevertheless,
my conclusion of the interview could be regarded as narrow and limited since both my
interviewees were from the same place, Purdue University. Therefore, I decided to learn
from a wider arrange of perspectives. In order to find out the answer for whether it is
beneficial for students to work on campus in a broader level, I picked three articles (two
newspaper articles and one peer-reviewed journals) to enrich my background knowledge
on my research question and to find researches that could either support or oppose my
previous conclusion as well. After reading, I realized that working on campus had always

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

been a very controversial topic among college students. Some held positive perspectives
toward campus working because campus job could financially help student workers and
arm students with real work experiences. Meanwhile, others suggested that campus job
would create a huge conflict between students' time of studying and working. The results
of whether working is beneficial for one or not varies depend on the values of the
students. However, after analyzing all the information I collected from various resources,
I concluded that though work on campus may cause certain disadvantages and
inconveniences, it is definitely helpful and beneficial for students in their future careers.
Student workers were normally paid with minimum wages and many students were
reluctant to work because of the salary was unsatisfying. However, Megan (2014)
suggested that even though student employees were paid only minimum wages, the
payments had the potential to rise if the student worker performed well at work and the
salary range could vary from $7.95 (minimum wage of the state of Ohio) to $30 per hour
depends on the types of job and positions students were accepted (Megan 2014, p.1). For
example, a student who works as a research assistant tends to have higher payment than
those who work in the dinning courts. The article also mentioned that student employees
played significant roles in the functioning of Ohio University (Megan 2014, p.2). The
article gave an example of Ping, the recreational center of Ohio University, and it claimed,
"Ping has 150 students (working there) right now Students hold out the day-to-day
operations. "I do not feel like Ping could operate without student workers because the

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

majority of workers are students, said Taylor Stewart, a senior studying communication
who works at Ping "(Megan 2014, p.5).
I agree with the two core ideas of the article, which are student workers payments
can be different depend on different types of campus jobs and student employees have
greatly contributed to the functioning of their colleges. Through my last interview, I
already found out that my two interviewees received different amount of payments
regarding on their jobs and both of them dedicated themselves in to their works, which
helped operating their working institutes. However, there is weakness present in the
article, which the article lacks of giving research methods or data to help support its
claims. The absent of data could affect the article's credibility.
Reynolds (2014) was negative about student work on campus. It firstly stated that
working on campus is beneficial in some aspects such as it is closer to class and the
working experiences might help students with their future career. Nevertheless, it then
pointed out the payment that students received were not enough to cover their tuition
(Reynolds 2014, p.3). The article gave an example of students at Wichita State University.
WSU has a policy that students could work no more than 30 hours a week, yet the money
students earned within this time limit were far from paying their educational cost and
apartment rents (Reynolds, 2014, p.4). Therefore, because student workers were only
paid with minimum wages, the article did not suggest students to work on campus to earn
just a few extra bucks.

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

Reynolds (2014) was more objective than Megan (2014) because Reynolds (2014)
contained both advantages and disadvantages of students work on campus. By discussing
both sides of campus employment, Reynolds (2014) enabled its audiences to come up
with their own conclusions based on the information provided instead of just accepted the
author's point of view passively. Besides, it brought up a great point, which if school
cancel the working time limit or raise the payment of students, working on campus might
be a great option. However, same flaws appeared in Reynolds (2014) as in Megan (2014),
which they were both missing the research data or figures to support their claims and
there were no references listed in these two news journals so it created a confusion of
where exactly did the author gather all the information from and whether the author's
information sources were authoritative or not.
Palmer and Bray (2008) was a peer-reviewed article named "What is the On-Campus
Experience? Engineering Student Study and Work". In the article, it provided many data
collected from universities all over the world and the data showed that student
employment increased rapidly over the past two decades. For instance, in 1998, only 46%
of full time student in the United Kingdom worked around 10 hours a week. By the time
of 2000, over 60%of students work over 10 hours per week and 13% of them work up to
20 hours a week. The problem was that Students work massive amount of hours a week
reported to have serious problem of balancing their time between work and study. A
study presented in the paper showed that 77% of the students who works indicated that
work had affected their grades in some ways such as attendance in classes and production

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

of assignments (Palmer and Bray, 2008, p.805). Nevertheless, the article also mentioned
that even though work could get in the way of studying for some college students, the
work experiences were great for student's future employment. In the article, the author
emphasized, " Indeed, students who do not have a history of job employment are likely to
be at a disadvantage in the job market." (Palmer and Bray, 2008, p.807)
Palmer and Bray (2008) was more credible for it provided a great number of data as
well as the range of its research was worldwide (it studied students employment in three
different countries). Besides, this article was the most objective and unbiased one for
every point it mentioned, there were always evidences that supported related points.
However, one weakness of the paper was that if failed to give a solution to the problem it
discovered. For instance, the paper well presented the student employee's dilemma, which
working took a considerable amount of time out of their study time. Nonetheless, there
was no viable solution offered by the paper that might contribute to solving this problem.
So personally, I think this paper could be better if the author had conducted interviews
with some student workers who managed their time wisely and sufficiently thus achieved
excellence in both academia and work.
In brief, through reading different perspectives and ideas on the topic of student work
on campus, I had a clearer image of the benefits and disadvantages of student workers
from other schools, even from other countries. Students who worked on campus thus
gained work experiences and working skills were likely to outcompete others in applying
for jobs (Palmer and Bray, 2008). Besides, student workers had significantly contributed

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

to the functioning of their colleges, which made student employees a indispensable group
in many colleges (Megan 2014). Although many voices claimed that work did play an
important role in the decline of student workers grades, I disagree with this statement..
From the information I gathered from my previous interviewees and Palmer and Bray
(2008), I found out that all my interviewees had outstanding grades while remaining
working more than 10 hours per week. And Palmer and Bray (2008) suggested that most
declines of student workers' grades were due to their poor time management skills. That
was to say, if there were consultants or student employees who have excellent time
management skills that could train student workers how should they balance their work
and study times, students would not have such large concerns on their relationship
between grades and works anymore. Therefore, I suggested colleges could ask their
junior or senior students to give lectures on how to offset the imbalance distribution of
time between work and study to the incoming student workers, who were not good at
balancing their time of work and study. Meanwhile, colleges should also carry out
policies to encourage students pursue academic success such as students have GPA below
certain points are not allowed to work.

References:
1. Megan, H(2014, Sep 30). Minimum-wage student workers crucial to OU's functionality.
The Post, p.1,2,5. Retrieved November 1 from
http://www.thepostathens.com/news/article_839f6c30-4826-11e4-91ae-0017a43b2370.ht
ml

THE CONTROVERSY ON CAMPUS WORKING

2. Palmer, S,& Bray, S. (2008). What is the on-campus experience? Engineering student
study and work. Tempus publication, 24, 802-810. Retrieved November 1 from
http://www.thesunflower.com/opinion/article_c1e50240-6048-11e4-8d8e-0017a43b2370.
html
3. Reynolds, S(2014, Oct 30). Working on campus not enough to pay bills. The sunflower,
p.4. Retrieved November 1 from
http://www.ijee.ie/latestissues/Vol24-4/s17_IJEE1844.pdf