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Underpaid Jobs On College Campuses

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For some college students, the weekends and weeknights call for studying and time with your friends. However, for other college students, their weekends and weeknights are filled with work.

Whether it be in a dining hall, an arena, or a laundry room, the students that embark in federally-granted work study are some of the hardest working students on college campuses. However, the problem is that work-study students are usually vastly underpaid and sometimes even find themselves running out of their federal stipend by the end of the school year.

“I work almost every weekend, but it still feels like I am falling short.” Mike Strazik, a biology major at Quinnipiac said, “I just wish there were higher paying jobs on campus.”

According to the 2011–12 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:12), only six percent of college students do work study, …show more content…

Most Quinnipiac University students find themselves picking up shifts at one of the food establishments on campus, the athletic-laundry rooms, or holding mundane desk jobs at the university's offices that are scattered around the three campuses. However, Strazik struck gold, landing one of the most revered work-study jobs on campus ,working in the Sports and Information department with Quinnipiac Athletics.

“I got lucky plain and simple. I had friends working in the department and they told their boss, Ken Sweeten, and I was brought on almost immediately,” Strazik said, “But I couldn’t imagine where I would be if I didn’t have friends already in jobs in the departments.”

The next struggle is the pay. Most work-study students are given minimum-wage paying jobs regardless of the job itself. For college students, the $10-an-hour pay, Connecticut’s minimum wage, usually only affords them around $150 dollars in a two-week pay period. For someone who lives off campus, like Strazik, it can be

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