I’m going to chime in here because my daughter is one of the students at MHC in this situation. We budgeted her work study to cover books and incidentals.
*Yes, she has taken all available shifts in the dining hall. That totals 2 hours a week. She might have picked up another 1.5 hours last semester but it conflicted with classes, and she is NOT going to miss class to work. It’s not why she’s at school and she maintains a very high GPA.
*Yes, she takes all available substitute shifts (when she can get them – they’re snapped up within minutes and she frequently misses them because she’s in a class when they’re posted)
*Yes, she has looked for other work-study jobs on campus. There are some generic postings that stay up on the website but they’re frequently not actually hiring.
*Yes, she has looked for off-campus, non-work-study jobs, but again, they don’t fit with her schedule. She has school commitments nights and weekends in addition to standard class hours, and labs 3-4 afternoons a week (STEM major). She’s a varsity athlete, a SAAC rep, and volunteers teaching swimming to learning disabled kids.
*Yes, we have addressed this with administration. They’re absolutely wonderful in the MHC financial aid office – patient and caring and helpful and responsive. They said it’s worst for first year students because a lot of kids line jobs up in the spring for the following year, so the first years get what’s left. It’s also not well explained that once you get one dining hall shift it’s okay to get work-study jobs elsewhere on campus. Many first years think they can ONLY work in the dining hall, while the reality is that they only need at least one shift.
*My daughter is extremely driven and when she’s home for summer and other breaks she busts her butt working full-time+ as a lifeguard and swim instructor. One of the things that makes her (and me) craziest is the implication that she’s just not trying hard enough. She looks for the shifts, she asks for them, she spreads the word that she’s willing to cover for people. She WANTS these shifts.
One of my degrees is in finance and I have worked as an accountant for about 15 years. I educated myself about financial aid a LOT before my daughters looked at colleges, probably more than 99% of the people out there, not that that’s saying much. I ran 100 net price calculators and read what seemed like a zillion threads on CC. We did not budget for her to get all of the work study she was awarded, because I am very careful, and because I rather naively wanted her to be able to turn down hours in case it was causing her overload and interfered with her studying. I laugh now at myself over this.
Bottom line? My feeling is that if a school promises to meet 100% of need, and work study is packaged as part of financial aid, there should be hours available. I don’t care if they’re all scrubbing dishes at 5 am, but something should be available! With all of the articles and threads I read, my takeaway was that the kids may need to be very assertive and go after the jobs, but in general if they wanted them the jobs were there. That hasn’t been our experience.
It’s an amazing school and wonderful in just about every other way. But next year, if she’s awarded any work study, we’ll just pretend that she’s not.