Pay Increases, Budgets Don't
Belmont has increased the baseline pay for its student workers from $10 an hour to $13 – but office budgets haven’t increased to match.
“When pay increases by 30%, everything we can do decreases by 30%,” said Michael Hudson-Wood, director of learning support.
Budgets were finalized in June, but the pay change wasn’t communicated until late July. Because of this, managers are cutting students’ hours, and many students will not have a higher income.
Cameron Bryant, academic program director for Student Success and Flourishing, said his suite has had to cut some students’ hours.
“The pay increase has led to us recalculating and playing with the budget,” he said.
His suite makes up for it by hiring Federal Work-Study students, since these students’ pay comes out of a different budget. However, FWS students have a set limit they can earn, usually $2,000 for the year. With a higher wage per hour, FWS students will hit this limit sooner.
This semester, the Student Success and Flourishing Suite has 25 total student workers to do the same amount of work that nine students were able to accomplish last semester, said Bryant.
The learning centers have run into similar issues, said Hudson-Wood.
She said the learning centers employ between 75 to 80 students, and roughly 10% of them are hired through FWS. She estimated the students worked, on average, eight hours a week last year, but this year, they're working five hours per week.
In response to this, Hudson-Wood is planning on requesting a 20% increase in her department’s budget when time comes to submit the budget in December.
While budgets don’t allow every student to earn more, some students have found that this change does alleviate cost-of-living increases. Belmont student Lucas Boudoin, who works at the Writing Center, did not have his hours cut and therefore has seen a direct increase in overall income.
“I have more money to spend at Bear Necessities. And I have a car, so I’m paying for gas, too,” he said.
Amanda Moss, Federal Work Study Counselor, declined to be interviewed. The Vision was not able to interview anyone else involved in making this decision.
Written by Olivia Abernathy and Mason Merkle
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