Making Students’ Jobs More Meaningful

Ask most Americans what campus employment looks like, and they’ll probably describe students swiping cards in the gym or checking out books in the library. The work is menial but flexible, a way for students to make a little money between classes and for colleges to keep their labor costs down.

But where the public often sees only a paycheck, colleges — under pressure to better prepare students for the work force — are starting to see potential.

Almost two-thirds of students work at least part time, thousands of them on their own campuses. They’re already learning job skills — they just don’t realize it, or they can’t translate their work experience into terms that resonate with employers. For colleges seeking to improve student outcomes, then, student workers are the low-hanging fruit.

Recognizing this, some colleges are trying to make campus work more meaningful — or at least to communicate its value better. They’re rewriting job descriptions, creating skilled internships, and helping students find meaning in even the most mundane work.

One of the most ambitious efforts is taking place at Toronto’s Ryerson University. Over the past five years, the college has reviewed hundreds of student jobs to ensure that they’re teaching the skills that Canadian employers say they value most. If a position is found to be lacking in opportunities for skill development, staff members will add duties to the job description. A student working at the front desk in the gym, for example, might be asked to write a report categorizing the types of questions they receive.

In Ryerson’s system, each job — from “varsity equipment and uniform manager” to “Aboriginal peer support” — comes with a list of learning outcomes. Supervisors meet regularly with student employees to discuss their progress toward these outcomes, and both student and supervisor evaluate the student’s development at the end of the year.

Professionalizing Students’ Campus Jobs

Colleges are gearing work experiences to better teach the skills employers value most.

• Low-Cost Work-Study Revamps
• What I Learned From My Campus Job

Here in the United States, Clemson University has sought to professionalize campus employment, creating a paid-internship program that rewards faculty and staff members who offer skilled jobs to students. Close to 1,000 students participated last year, in jobs that had them redesigning campus websites, crafting marketing strategies, and visiting local high schools to discuss college admissions and planning.

The programs aren’t cheap, and there’s not a ton of quantitative evidence that they’re working, but the early signs are encouraging. In surveys, students and employers report gains in soft skills like communication and critical thinking. And at some institutions that have remade campus employment, students who work have slightly higher GPAs than their peers do, are more likely to finish in four years, and are more likely to have a job upon graduating.

Still, colleges have a long way to go to convince parents and policy makers that they’re producing graduates ready for the professional world. In a recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans strongly agreed that college graduates are well prepared for success in the work force.

Ryerson’s effort, costing $3.2 million (U.S.), grew out of a seminal program at the University of Iowa called Iowa GROW, or Guided Reflection on Work.

GROW, which started in 2009, pioneered the “structured interview” — the brief, periodic conversation in which supervisors ask student workers to draw connections between what they’re learning on the job and in the classroom, and to identify skills they’ll carry into the work force.

In structured interviews, students get practice answering the age-old interview question: “Tell me why you’re qualified.” They learn to articulate their transferable skills so that they don’t resort to a recitation of their GPA or major or honors, says George Kuh, who helped create the Iowa program.

“Employers today don’t care what classes you took,” says Mr. Kuh, founding director of the National Survey of Student Engagement. “They want to know what you’ve learned and how you’re going to use it in the job.”

Supervisors, steeped in the jargon of the employment sector, can help students “get the translation just right,” so that their applications are more likely to clear the résumé-scanning software or hiring manager’s desk, says Stephen Teske, a consultant at EAB, a higher-education-research company.

More than 100 colleges have copied aspects of the Iowa program, but in all of them, “the critical piece is conversations,” says Sarah Hansen, associate vice president for student life.

Ryerson discovered Iowa GROW five years ago, as it was seeking a solution to two distinct problems: a funding shortfall for student jobs, and poor worker engagement. In the Division of Student Affairs, faculty members were clamoring for more student workers, and John Austin, then the division’s executive director, was looking for ways to persuade campus leadership to expand the work-study program. At the same time, supervisors of some administrative jobs were complaining that students weren’t showing up for work or were quitting midway through the term.

The college found its fix in GROW, which promised to both increase student engagement and elevate the humble desk job, demonstrating to campus leaders the value of work-study. Mr. Austin and colleagues took the Iowa model and expanded on it, incorporating learning outcomes into 350 student-affairs jobs.

At first some supervisors chafed at the additional demand on their time and wondered how the structured interviews would work. To minimize the burden on supervisors, Ryerson required just three such interviews a term, and it provided templates to guide their conversations with student employees.

At the end of the first year, supervisors reported that student workers were more punctual, more professional, and more productive than they had been before the change.

Amanda Cohen, who supervises 13 students as Ryerson’s coordinator of facilities and events, says she asks them in the first meeting what they hope to get out of the job and then tries to shape it to meet their expectations. As students gain more experience, she also gives them leadership responsibilities.

Lauren Tracey, one of Ms. Cohen’s employees, says her job booking and managing campus events has strengthened her communication skills and helped her overcome shyness. She appreciates the autonomy she is given to make decisions on her own. “My supervisors are always there if I have questions,” she says. “But most of the time, it’s just me doing everything.”

Now in its fourth year, the program has grown to cover 1,000 jobs. Mr. Austin says he hopes to triple the size by 2020, and potentially expand it to off-campus jobs.

The goal, he says, is to “equip students with the ability to articulate the meaning of their work.”

Asked if Ryerson is ever accused of simply dressing up administrative work, Mr. Austin says the university has never denied that student jobs can be tedious.

“We recognize that a lot of these student jobs have mundane aspects,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t be learning experiences.”

Still, measuring student growth hasn’t been easy. Many of Ryerson’s staff supervisors don’t have college degrees themselves, and training them to assess whether students are meeting their learning outcomes “wouldn’t be feasible at this scale,” says Emily Jones, who recently took over as head of the program.

She has created a system that will substitute seven “competencies” for the 10 “learning outcomes” in next year’s job descriptions. The difference, she says, is more than semantic: “Learning outcomes are typically measurable,” while competencies are not.

Around the time Ryerson was beginning its work-study overhaul, Clemson was embarking on an equally ambitious project: the creation of a paid “professional” internship program.

The University Professional Internship/Co-op program, or UPIC, would offer financial incentives to faculty and staff members to create skilled jobs for students, covering half the cost of their employees’ salaries. The goal was to expand the program from 20 students to more than 500 by 2020, at a projected cost of more than $1 million.

Five years later, the program includes more than 900 students, with more than $2 million in staff and student salaries and operating expenses. State funds cover half that cost.

Applications to create new positions are judged on the basis of a 10-point rubric that asks applicants to describe how students will be supported and challenged; list specific projects the students will be working on; and name at least one expected learning outcome. Applicants can earn additional points for explaining how students will interact and network with professionals in their field of study, develop leadership skills, and build their résumés.

Applications are vetted by three “site coordinators,” who visit each internship site at least once or twice a year to talk with students.

Neil B. Burton, executive director of Clemson’s Center for Career and Professional Development, says the program provides good jobs in a rural area where such opportunities are scarce. It lets students make some money — $10 to $16 an hour — while testing out careers to see if they’re a good fit.

In a 2015-16 survey of recent graduates, students who had participated in the program were significantly more likely to be employed full time than other students — 57 percent versus 35 percent — but less likely to be enrolled in graduate school or otherwise continuing their education — 20 percent versus 32 percent.

Mr. Burton says he shares the 57-percent figure with parents at orientation. “It makes their eyes light up, because they’re looking for a return on investment.”

Clemson has been approached by dozens of institutions seeking to replicate its program, he says, but warns that it would be a financial challenge for most.

“Most won’t have the legislature give them a million-dollar check,” he says, so “they’re borrowing ideas.”

For universities like Ryerson and Clemson, a strong jobs program is not only a way to give students a competitive edge — it’s a way to set the institution apart, too.

When Clemson created its professional internships, in 2012, Mr. Burton told The Chronicle that the program would help Clemson distinguish itself from its peers. “Clemson would like to be a top-20 public university,” he said at the time. “What the administration decided is that we want to make sure that we engage students in what they’re learning.”

Ryerson has a respected engineering program, but it doesn’t have the name recognition of some other Toronto institutions, so it’s seeking other ways to stand out. The jobs program helps it position itself as “a young, innovative, fast-moving university,” says Ms. Jones, its student-staff-development specialist.

Skilled campus jobs can also help level the playing field for low-income and first-generation students, who are less likely than their better-off peers to have parents who can land them internships, and more likely to need to work to pay for college.

Clemson, which gets 15 applications for every internship, offers incentives to employers to hire needier students, covering a full semester’s salary, rather than half, for Pell Grant-eligible first-generation students from South Carolina.

To participate in Ryerson’s jobs program, students must demonstrate financial need, typically by qualifying for aid from their home province.

“We’re serving students who may not otherwise have access to a jobs network,” says Ms. Jones. “We give them a foot in the door.”