A student’s economic situation drastically affects their ability to afford college. Many student workers at the University of Central Missouri supplement their income with additional work hours off campus, which can create challenges.

  Students are employed in almost every department on campus. Some positions include doing custodial work, being advisers in residence halls, tutoring and assisting in research positions.

  Hemang Patel is an undergraduate student working as a custodian at UCM. He performs his duties during morning shifts while pursuing his 12 credit hours of studies in the afternoon. Patel makes $11 an hour, and said it is enough to cover some basic living costs.

   “I just make that money so that I can kill my time, and I can pay my car insurance and gas money,” Patel said. 

  Patel also receives additional income from a ceramic business. Between the price of credit hours being more expensive for international students and the cost of his rent, he said he doesn’t think he’d survive on his UCM job alone.

 “I would definitely not be able to afford [to live] here,” Patel said. “It’s too expensive.”

  Ranea Taylor, associate vice president of Human Resources, explained there are a variety of student workers with different responsibilities.

  “They could be work-study student workers, they could be department-funded student workers, they could be grant-funded students — meaning they come to a department, might write a grant for some reason or another and they [the department] would get student workers associated with the grant,” Taylor said.

  For many students their pay is below Missouri’s minimum wage of $11.15. According to HR, student worker pay ranges between $10.55 to $25 an hour. While pay can increase to $25 per hour, this is for specific, grant-funded student researcher positions.

  Additionally, students are limited to 20 hours of work per week according to the Department of Education’s recommendations.

  Making $10.55 an hour at 20 hours a week means many student workers make just over $200 a week, while average UCM tuition including fees based on 30 credit hours is around $9,000 or just over $550 dollars per week during a sixteen-week semester. Student workers fulfilling all their hours at the minimum rate can afford about half their tuition by the end of the school year, yet this doesn’t take into consideration costs of housing, food, clothing and many other basic needs. With these circumstances, students supplement their income.

  Junior kinesiology major Danielle Pancoast works at the information desk in the Elliott Student Union. She divides her time between working at the desk 12 hours a week, at The District as a bartender 12 hours a week and being involved with a sorority alongside taking 4 classes.

  While last summer Pancoast was still being paid around $9 an hour at UCM, she recently was given a raise.

 “This helps cover rent, food, sorority bills, fun nights out, and other utilities,” Pancoast said. “I don’t really have school payments and my parents also pay a little bit.”

  Pancoast explained without her job and her parents that she would hardly be able to afford UCM. She also said she has observed her sorority sisters drop out over the years due to the stress of juggling a job and school or not having a job at all.

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