USC should open more on-campus positions to international students

Over the years, the United States has been crowned the most popular country for international students. Millions of them board flights to the U.S., where they will spend the next few years exploring and experiencing academic life. Here, about one in four students come from another country at USC. However, building a life in the U.S. is difficult for international students. Living in a metropolis like Los Angeles makes it even harder.

The ongoing graduate student workers union election calls to help all graduate student workers, including international students. There’s more USC can do to amplify international students’ voices, such as giving the same weight to international students in on-campus jobs.

I’ve been covering international students’ issues and stories for four years. I co-founded a Chinese news media platform during my undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, which covered issues like encountering racism, campus shootings and financial insecurity as an international student. I used to work in the campus cafeteria almost 10 hours a week to save money to travel during the Thanksgiving break when the entire town was buried in snow and no businesses were open. I had a fairly independent upbringing, and yet, I wished for stability and security during my undergraduate years.

I had to move from place to place in constant search for a cheaper lease. I walked miles to get groceries. I couldn’t use emergency services because medical bills were not affordable. Even though I don’t miss home as much as other international students might, I can’t beg my parents to pay for the overpriced flight tickets during the winter break. They worked hard to send me abroad. I believe it’s unfair as a capable young adult, to ask them to sponsor me all the time.

These are just a few examples of what many international students may endure while studying abroad. International students make up a small group among 15.8 million college students. There’s a limited amount of studies about international students, since they are often perceived as “outliers” who won’t stick around for too long.

They were never a part of the U.S. student body.

My official immigration title changed from “Non-resident Alien” to “Resident Alien” after six years in the U.S., during which I moved from a small college town in upstate New York to “the city of dreams” L.A.

Unlike many U.S. students, international students are ineligible for federal student loans and many other third-party scholarships, as they typically require U.S. citizenship. In some public universities like UCLA, international students have to pay almost double the tuition fees than their domestic, in-state peers. As USC follows suit with a tuition hike of 5% in the 2022-2023 academic year, international students’ families are left to grapple with the increase, in addition to currency exchange rates and global inflation.

For international students, some ways of making income include finding a part-time job or an internship. Yet off-campus jobs require international students to have an “educational affiliated” purpose for applying. It has to either be associated with the school’s curriculum or to contractually funded research projects at the graduate level. If you are lucky enough to secure a place, working for 20 hours per week as a full-time student is stressful.

Why 20 hours? Because withholding a student visa will be mandatory to enroll in school full-time. Students also cannot be full-time workers, except in the last semester of their program. Therefore, student visa holders can only work under 20 hours per week anywhere on campus.

But, many internship opportunities require students to work full-time for a minimum of three months. Even with remote working options international students cannot work for more than 20 hours a week, which sometimes hurts their chances of finding good opportunities.

On-campus jobs seem more reasonable for students who can’t travel and work outside their curriculum. These also generally have looser restrictions. International students can apply to every student working opportunity on campus except for Federal Work Study positions. Moreover, the ones which international students can apply for are not enough. According to connectSC, there are only 13 open positions for non-work-study student employment.

Some of the jobs on campus are not quite welcoming to student visa holders. For example, the website of the Dornsife writing center says, “because of visa restrictions, international graduate students with full Teaching/Research Assistantships or fellowships are not eligible for additional on-campus employment.” This position needs prior teaching experience, shutting the door on many undergraduate students.

Even for graduate-level students with fellowships, it is not enough to cover all the living expenses in L.A. According to the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism student handbooks, doctoral students’ stipends at Annenberg rose slightly, from $30,000 to $34,000 between 2017 and 2021, due to summer support and inflation relief.

Still, the amount does not match the cost of living in L.A. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single working adult must make $45,536 a year to earn a living wage in L.A. The current doctoral stipends at Annenberg school is short by about a fourth of the believed livable income. Same as the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, which holds 29 Ph.D. programs at USC.

I’m not asking schools to create specific positions for international students. But acknowledging and prioritizing international student workers will benefit the entire student body, and establish a fair, healthy and thriving campus culture.