ELIZABETH VREDEVELT
STAFF WRITER
3/18/2024
The beginning of 2024 saw the roll-out of a new tiered campus employee pay system at Alma College. While the changes are a much-needed update for student workers, the secrecy of its implementation reflects a long-standing tradition of poor on-campus employment communication.
Alma’s updated pay scale no longer compensates all student-held, on-campus positions at the equal minimum wage but operates on a three-scaled hierarchy depending on skill level, experience, number of responsibilities and a variety of other factors.
The first level of pay remains at Michigan’s minimum wage of $10.33. This bracket is for most entry-level jobs with little public interaction that require minimal training.
The second level includes jobs that require more in-depth training, significant amounts of responsibility, interactions with the public, etc. Jobs at level two pay up to $11.25 per hour.
At $13 an hour, level three of the pay scale is reserved for student employees who have managerial roles, work regularly with the public or hold a highly skilled position.
“We had some meetings over the last year with students with concerns over what they felt [was] some advanced work,” said Alma Payroll Coordinator Heidi Holland when asked what led to changes in compensation.
Holland clarified that there have always been some jobs on campus with different pay scales due to the nature of the work and the training required such as lifeguarding, nude modeling, sound technician work, etc. These new changes are an attempt at “trying to get some consistency across campus,” said Holland.
Despite these changes in pay, the 20-hour work-week cap remains unchanged, and students still cannot work overtime or be compensated differently for hours above the limitation that is based on Federal Work-Study recommendations.
Traditionally, Alma student employees have received a 10-cent bonus after one academic year of experience in a position, or roughly 100 hours of experience, but this recent change is the most significant change to student employee pay in quite some time.
For students who rely on work to pay for college or personal expenses, there is always the option of off-campus employment which has the benefit of not limiting work hours; however, this can present other challenges with scheduling and balancing classes.
Perhaps the most frustrating idea about these recent changes in student employment is not the change itself but the secrecy with which the new change was incorporated.
“My first day at my job this year, my boss, she told me, ‘Guess what, you’re getting paid $11.25 an hour now,’ and that’s the only knowledge I had of it,” said Cohen Schroeder (’26).
Other students had similar experiences, including Jackson Eelbode (’26), who, when asked about his knowledge of the pay changes, remarked, “I didn’t receive any correspondence from any of my employers; I didn’t receive emails from the college, nor did any of my coworkers talk about it.”
While technically students can request information about the new pay scale from their employers or the Student Affairs Office, information remains difficult to find and the roll-out was not widely announced.
An upgraded pay scale is a step in the right direction, but it is difficult not to think of how these payroll changes could have benefitted students who have been working for minimum wage in higher and middle-skilled positions for years.
The Almanian: News 
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