I am trying to find out if other schools have a minimum and/ or maximum number of hours that student employees can work during a work week?  Also, do these hours include night and weekend hours?  

We currently require students to work at least 2 shifts a week (approximately 6 - 8 hours), and we recommend that students don't work more than 20 hours a week.  We have a number of students who like to (and need to) work more than 20 hours a week, so we are trying to find a balance between making sure academics stays a priority and helping our students meet their financial needs.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.  

Our general university guideline is a max of 20 hours per week.  There is, however, the opportunity for a student to submit a waiver form to student employment that if approved by their academic advisor, allows them to work up to 31 hours.  We have a few positions (such as audio visual crew) that have odd shifts that do well with the 31 hour extension.

It's something we struggle with here as well.  We don't want students working to the point where academics suffer, yet we know they will get a second (or other) job off campus if they can't pay their bills.

There are other departments on our campus that routinely have their students obtain the 31 hour waiver in order to allow for maximum flexibility in scheduling.

During the academic year students are only allowed 20 hours per university guidlines. Some of our Graduate students can apply for waivers for more hours. Duirng breaks and the summer they can work up to 40 hours per week depending on summer classes they are taking.

Again, the priority for the university is academics so we hire more students and average them about 15 hours per week. Most will pick up extra shifts to get to their twenty. But with our students we have seen those who work the 20 hours consistantly are not maintaining a GPA. We have also instituted a GPA requirement which is helping the with this as well. We can't control their off campus employment but we do what we can.

Our institution states that student employees should not be scheduled any more than 10 hours per week so that we can "spread the employment love" and employ more students; however they say that we can not schedule over 20 hours per week.

I personally feel that the sweet spot is between 10-15 hours per week averaged out over 2-weeks (we used to schedule at least 8 regularly scheduled hours during the week plus weekend rotations). Depending on the position, less than 10 makes it hard for them to keep up with the rules, procedures, etc. More than 15 and they seem to be stretching a bit thin. 

I just read an article that states 1-15 hours per week is the ideal schedule for student employees. Of course, there is more control with on-campus employment, but the struggle comes with off-campus (we can't control it), but hopefully we all provide the best possible experience for the students!

Our policy is to maintain less than 20 hours per week - which is 40 per pay period - and usually students receive less than that, so its not generally an issue. Sometimes, creative scheduling is important in extenuating circumstances. In the summer, we try to schedule them at 37.5 hours or less per week...

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Matt Wise
Assistant Manager
Lock Haven University Bookstore
Lock Haven, PA