I assume schools handle work study differently, but my daughter just graduated UNCW, and she used her work study to gain invaluable experience and make contacts. When she was just starting as a freshman, she went to the job board and looked at all the openings, looking for those that would be in line with her major or something that sounded like she would gain good experience. Many of the other work-study students just signed up for open jobs, without taking the time to truly research each of them. She ended up working in the dean of students office for all four years and it was a great experience for her. If you have a student that has work-study in their financial aid package, the school does not automatically assign you a position, I recommend really looking at the open jobs and apply as soon as you get to campus
@OHMomof2 Let me try this one more time.
There are orientations and preorientations at schools. Orientation is free everywhere to my knowledge. So your kids had a free orientation. Pre-orientation varies tremendously by its purpose, and by its cost. Even colleges without big endowments sometimes have free pre-orientation for various retention or social reasons.
My original point was that my dd chose dorm crew. We could have afforded mountains if she chose. It was not expensive. She had a list of reasons to choose dorm crew. She liked it and did it all four years as well as worked in labs.
Actually orientation isn’t free everywhere. Some state schools charge for it. Maybe others. It was not only free but required at my kid’s college, S12’s was free but not required - just a chance to sign up for classes early and such.
What surprises me is that Harvard charges for pre-orientation programs that are meant to be for kids to bond and meet others and all that. https://fdo.fas.harvard.edu/pages/pre-orientation - these are the ones that were free for D and even me, back in the 80s, when I did one at a different school.
I take your point about your D’s choice, and I do not second-guess it. I imagine some kids DO choose it because their families cannot afford mountains, however.
@OHMomof2 you are right. Private and public colleges charge fees for orientation. I guess we all pay one way or another, but orientation seems so basic as to just be . . . Sometimes short, sometimes long, but a given.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/slideshows/10-surprising-college-fees-you-may-have-to-pay?slide=2
Edit: the webpage says there is FA for any program with costs. They are generous, but few like to ask.
Kids from families with income from $80,000 to $150,000 are not poor kids. They can have work study jobs too.
I was a janitor outside of campus too. I did not feel ashamed.
Admission to Harvard does not mean admission to a wealthy class.
I am regarded as a wealthy parent by my daughter’s college now. She cannot get work study or any kind of aid. I am not sure why people are so sensitive about class social classes.
There are many parents on c.c. whose kids never have and never will have a manual labor or service job. In high school it is all “researcher” or unpaid internships, and in college that continues. Any time spent in a paid job that doesn’t advance the future career goals of research, or a job in CS or IBB is wasted time.
I didn’t have that luxury. I worked two jobs ever summer - 60 hours a week, and 10-15 hours during the school year at whatever I could get to make what my scholarship didn’t cover.
Now I could afford to have kids that never worked in manual or service, but I thought it would be a bad idea for them to miss out on that experience, so work they do.
@VickiSoCal. I would guess most our kids on cc really don’t have to work. But in my opinion they should work. My two kids work and they appreciate what they save. It’s time for them to become adults and have responsibility. They don’t “have” to but they want to. Studies come first but social skills are important also.
The problem in the story is that Harvard was using government funds to pay poor kids to work as Harvard’s cleaning staff. It wasn’t money that these kids were being paid by Harvard for labor, the problem is that Harvard is using Federal Funds, earmarked for providing kids with work that has educational value, and using it A, for work that has no educational value, and B, for Harvard’s janitorial services. It is no different than taking the funds and using them to pay Harvard’s custodial staff. Basically this school with Billions in endowments, is taking our money, that we gave for helping poor kids through college, and using it to save themselves some money. Basically, Harvard wants us to pay for their cleaning staff cleaning staff.
Overall, I think that there is a problem with cleaning rooms and bathrooms during the school year, as opposed to cleaning them before and after the kids arrive at the dorms. The difference being that the former comes across as working for the rich kids at Harvard, while the latter is very clearly working for Harvard itself. You want two kids to interact in the classroom as peers, while one is cleaning the other’s toilet. “Joe, do you have yesterday’s homework?” “no, and next time do a better job on my sink, you left some toothpaste in the corner yesterday”. Of course with work study, it’s even worse, since that student who is cleaning after the rich student is doing so as a requirement for them to stay at Harvard.
Other types of jobs, like gardening, library work, office work, or cleaning up before or after the school year are not personal, and it’s very clear that the students are doing a paid job for the University, not for any other student. Working in cleaning during the year also has the issue of being much more difficult to do while studying. The only real time to do this is during class time, which cuts into a student’s ability to attend classes.
https://ifap.ed.gov/fsahandbook/attachments/0910FSAHbkVol6Ch2Oct2.pdf
Students on financial aid have the options:
- Accept loan instead of work study.
- Can choose any kind of work study job.
Also work study is not a guaranteed aid. A student receives a WS award but may not be able to find any convenient job and will receive no actual money.
Before this thread I’d never heard that the work study program itself said anything about work being related to the student’s course of study or having educational value. And I participated for years. I worked in the dining halls for 2.5 years and then in the computer lab (I was a history major). I’m general it was possible to get a “better” job than food service after freshman year but the hourly pay in the dining halls was better so I stuck with it for a while.
I know a few people who had work study related to their majors, but most didn’t.
Harvard isn’t unusual as far as that goes. There aren’t necessarily a lot of on-campus jobs related to every major. And there are other jobs, both manual labor and generic clerical work, that need to be done.
I can see how cleaning dorms might feel a bit different, especially while other students are living in them. But let’s not pretend work study jobs are always some meaningful educational experience. They aren’t.
In practice, most students on WS have already maxed out their federal loans. H doesn’t package them though, so there and at a few other colleges that may not be so.
I saw that.
Anthony Jack (who is a Harvard prof and fellow and whose just-came-out book probably sparked the controversy in my OP), talks about ways schools can support low income kids well, and not well. An example of “not” was making tickets to some event available to financial aid kids for free, but making a separate line from the main one to get those tickets.
I think school year dorm crew - or making kids jump through extra hoops to get pre-orientation paid for rather than just making it all free for everyone - hits me that way.
But I am not convinced dorm crew is a bad thing, as many kids seem to like it and it pays well.
One of my kids worked very part time at a VERY expensive high end restaurant…where, frankly, he would not be able to afford to eat as a patron.
I guess he shouldn’t have this job because he is serving folks with far more jeans than he has. ?
He is grateful for the job and actually loves it.
I agree with a lot of your post @MWolf though apparently the idea that federal work study funds be used for educational jobs is encouraged but not required.
Actually a thing DC kids seems to like is the flexibility. They can go into bathrooms to clean pretty much anytime they have a couple of hours, unless the occupant tells them they can’t. Or so it seems from the articles I’ve read. They can clean with the residents in the room, or not (they have master keys). One student said she never cleans Sat or Sun mornings because bathrooms are in the worst shape then (!).
I also read that Harvard is gradually adding more shared hall bathrooms, and these are cleaned by professional custodial staff. So it’s only the House suites and such that DC are cleaning.
I know a woman who used to work on the dorm maintenance crew at a highly selective college. A few years ago she related this experience to me:
She continued to have to flush the toilet every day or risk getting written up.
Serving all students and faculty in the dining hall or upper income patrons at a fancy restaurant is much different than cleaning the toilet of an individual student. Scholarship students shouldn’t have to work for other students. While they may like the money that comes with the job I find it hard to believe they enjoy cleaning their classmates’ bathrooms.
I’m not seeing the issue here at all. When I was in college I worked for the dining hall. I wasn’t on work study but many who had the job were. None of us ever looked at it as us having to work for the rich kids or clean up after them. It was a job and we were happy to have it. I’ve never heard of work study as having to be a part of your major or education. Also, above someone said that their child was on dorm crew and the individual students’ dorm rooms are cleaned by themselves during the school year. My daughter works at the rec center at school. She’s never thought of it as having to work for the rich kids either.
The room itself is cleaned by the student, dorm crew cleans the room’s bathrooms.
@OHMomof2 the dorm bathroom? Or an individual bathroom? I still see it as no different than working in a dining hall cleaning someone’s plates. It’s not as though anyone is required to take a specific job.
@collegemom9 The individual bathroom. Many Harvard houses have private bathrooms in each room or suite.
https://www.thecrimson.com/column/bloom-with-a-view/article/2012/3/5/End-Dorm-Crew/
@OHMomof2 still don’t see an issue. Would you rather these jobs go to non students? I bet those who get these jobs would not. Most of us who work, work for those more fortunate than us. Why is this an issue? Would you be more comfortable if the students were cleaning students’ plates? Where is the difference?
@collegemom9 I was just correcting the assertion that kids don’t clean other kid’s private bathrooms during the school year. That’s in fact what they do.
As I said earlier, “I am not convinced dorm crew is a bad thing, as many kids seem to like it and it pays well.”
However, while DC provides some leadership opportunities, I’d rather see students do work that is resume-enhancing during college, if possible. Low income kids (those on work study) especially could use those opportunities, since they likely haven’t had them before. It may be that those kids prefer DC because of the pay and flexibility. If the other opportunities are also there for them, then I’m fine with it.