[Correction (March 1, 2026): This article has been edited to correct the title attributed to Cyrenius Fitzjohn. Fitzjohn is Program Manager of FLI, not the Director].
Many Work Study students at Vassar College have difficulty finding jobs on campus. Several have cited JobX, the site that all Vassar employers must use to hire students, as being central to the problem. In the wake of rising tuition costs and a 2025 Worker Student Coalition (WSC) petition that called for guaranteed employment for all Work Study students, Vassar students and administrators are exploring different ways to fix this system.
According to the Vassar website, Work Study students are given “priority” in the job search process by being awarded exclusive access to JobX for the first month of every semester before it opens up to the rest of the campus. The website states, “Work Study is a need-based student employment program which provides students with part-time jobs on or near campus.”
The Miscellany News spoke to multiple students who described struggling with JobX. Julia Haggerty ’28, a Work Study and First-generation, Low Income (FLI) student, explained, “I would just put in probably anywhere from 15 to 20 applications, and maybe hear back from one or two, and sometimes not hear back at all. And, of the couple that I would get interviews for, they would end up picking…somebody who had worked there before.” She reported that, despite being a FLI and Work Study student, it took her from the beginning of her freshman year to the spring of her sophomore year to find a job.
Other Work Study students expressed similar experiences applying for work on JobX. Ryan Santos ’29, a Work Study and QuestBridge student, reflected on the system as a whole: “The employment system in place is inconsistent and unreliable, and employment seems to be based on luck rather than need. I am not the only student who has been affected by the current system; more action needs to be taken.”
WSC Co-Chair Gilana Steckel ’26 also expressed frustrations with the hiring system. She said of JobX, “The system has basically no regulation. There are many, many jobs listed on the system that are already taken that are still up there. Students apply and don’t receive responses from employers.” According to Director of Human Resources Operations Linda Wessberg, “When students inform us that an employer has not communicated with them, or that a job posting is incorrectly listed as available, we do engage supervisors to assist.”
For many Vassar students, not being able to find employment poses several material challenges. FLI Program Manager Cyrenius Fitzjohn commented, “I know lots of students who work additional jobs off campus on top of finding a Work Study position, so making all of those things work into a schedule. I think [it] is an added burden that isn’t necessarily always taken into consideration.” Haggerty echoed this experience. “It’s definitely made every semester very tough…because instead of having to not worry about money constantly, I do have to worry about money constantly,” she explained. “So, it’s definitely made my experience here more difficult than it should be.”
WSC is dedicated to making employment opportunities easier for Work Study students. In Spring 2025, the organization released a petition calling for reforms to student labor on campus. A central demand of WSC’s petition was to: “Ensure that all students with work-study allotments are guaranteed campus employment and placed in a position before applications open to all students.” The petition received over 700 signatures from Vassar students, faculty, staff, parents and community members.
Steckel told the Miscellany, “It is the responsibility of the College to make sure that every single student with a Work Study award has the opportunity if they want to have a job. Further, students should be able to find a job as soon as they arrive on campus… Many students don’t earn the full allotment because they’re not able to find a job immediately.”
The College has recently been experimenting with potential changes to the current hiring system. Wessberg explained some possible alternatives. “Last semester, we introduced a pilot Job Slotting Program for First-Year students, which placed approximately 70 students directly into jobs and received overwhelmingly positive feedback.”
This program gives first-year students the ability to apply directly to student employment, where they are then directly matched with available positions. VSA Senator and Student Financial Affairs Committee Chair Alexander Swift ’26 commented, “[Pilot Job Slotting], I think, is a great way that human resources is moving to centralize the issue of granting students Work Study and moving towards helping students circumvent JobX in order to get work.”
Members of WSC appreciated that the Pilot Job Slotting program is being pushed by the College, but argued that it is not enough. Steckel said, “This year, 60 or 70 students were placed in jobs through the program, but it’s not enough, and it’s not guaranteed employment for Work Study students. So, there needs to be a way for the College to be in touch with every student on Work Study, and if they can’t find a job for any reason, [there should be] a new system to offer them one.”
Wessberg explained that Student Employment has committed to work towards replacing JobX by Fall 2027. The College has not officially commented on what will replace JobX, but Swift explained, “In addition to [Pilot Job slotting], they are currently looking at potentially shifting to Workday as a form of applying for jobs instead of JobX.”
To others, the issue has broader implications. Fitzjohn commented, “I appreciate the idea of Work Study, of giving students the opportunity to earn more funds while they’re on campus, but, in some regards, it’s also limiting… It feels somewhat counterintuitive to me to be like, ‘Here is this benefit you get, but you have to work for it.’”
Members of the Vassar community are also focusing on tangible ways for struggling students to overcome these issues. Fitzjohn concluded, “I think a big first step would just be giving FLI students or Pell-eligible students an opportunity to share what would improve their experience, and then try to implement those where we can.” Swift also pointed to Human Resources (HR) as an important avenue students should use to speak up about their concerns: “I think they should absolutely make their opinions heard, because HR is listening… The more that students make their opinions heard, the more that an informed change can occur.”
Steckel thought differently about HR. She stated: “HR listened last semester because we forced them to listen through our petition. We were backed by massive support. We hosted a rally where, for weeks, the administration did not reach out to us to respond to our petition, despite our direct demand for them to do so. We delivered the petition to their door, demanding that they listen to us.”
Steckel continued, “We need students across campus to be talking about student labor with each other, to share experiences, to find common experiences, common struggles that we’ve had with student labor. It’s through these conversations and forms of building solidarity across workplaces that student workers can realize the fundamental problems with the student employment system here and build momentum together, and begin to affect change.”
In an email to The Miscellany News, President of the College Elizabeth Bradley wrote, “Student input and feedback has been essential to these improvements, and Human Resources, which oversees Student Employment, continues to dialogue with students as they advance their efforts.”
As the struggle for Work Study students to find campus jobs continues, the Miscellany asked WSC if they had a message for Vassar’s student workers who feel discouraged by the current system. In response, WSC Co-Chair Mae Buck ’26 addressed student workers directly: “It’s important to remember that your work generates the value of this college…Nothing is a stronger demonstration of our collective labor power than us all banding together and saying, at once, our work has value, our work generates this value.”