Students’ tuition dollars keep the lights on at Ohio University. Why should their workweeks be limited to 20 hours?
The largest employer in town, Ohio University, won’t let students work more than 20 hours per week.
University officials have said they don’t want students’ workdays to conflict with their schoolwork. They also don’t want to offer students health insurance, as they are required to do under the federal policy that requires those who work more than 30 hours per week to be offered an insurance plan.
We did the math for a weeklong series about student debt that began Monday.
A student would have to work 40 hours per week, at a minimum wage job, to pay for a year of tuition. That’s not including taxes on the salary or additional living expenses, such as food and housing.
We want a college degree. We want to attend OU. And we want to work hard.
We know the university has to balance a budget. But so do students.
We hope the university’s Board of Trustees is conscious of this every time it debates a tuition increase. We’d hate to think board members don’t think of the student working two minimum wage jobs to pay for that tuition increase.
Board members should make time in their schedules to meet with students to discuss tuition hikes. They should gather feedback from a wide sampling of students, in addition to the two student trustees who don’t have voting power.
It shouldn’t take a protest — and subsequent arrests — for a dissenting student view to come up in a board meeting.
Students are, after all, the ones who keep the meeting room’s lights on. And if tuition keeps increasing — who’s going to be the one to write the check if nobody can afford to attend?
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors: editor-in-chief Jim Ryan, managing editor Sara Jerde, opinion editor Xander Zellner and projects editor Allan Smith. Post editorials are independent of the publication's news coverage.
