By Malak Monir

Employment opportunities for students within Education City (EC) are diminishing this year, particularly after cuts in Qatar Foundation’s student employment budget at the start of the fall semester.

This year, the budget for the entire Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Student Employment Program was cut by almost 50 percent, according to Adam Al-Saadi, director of the HBKU career development center which, despite its name, oversees the student employment program.

HBKU, a division under QF located within the EC campus, was affected by what appears to be a larger effort by QF to reexamine its own budget, Al-Saadi said.

As a result of theses cuts, not only are students having trouble finding jobs, but even those who are employed must deal with reduced working hours and lower salaries.

Permanent or Temporary?

The root of these issues, these cuts to the HBKU student employment program budget, was a decision made by QF’s upper management, according to Al-Saadi. No specific reason was given for the cut, he said, and it is unclear whether this is a permanent adjustment to the program’s budget or a temporary exercise to identify areas where QF might be overspending.

“We were told in our HBKU orientation that there are currently 300 students working under the student employment program,” said Muhammad Hassan, a communications freshman at Northwestern University in Qatar. According to Hassan, he applied for 11 jobs across the EC campus, but received no job offers. Hassan also notes that, as an international student, finding work is more difficult, since he does not have many opportunities to work outside of EC.

Calls to QF communications Directorate were not answered.

Cuts reduce pay and hours a week, says student.

The situation is also difficult for students who already have jobs on campus. Shahan Ali Memon, a student at CMU-Q, works at the Student Center as a building manager, but the current budget cuts have reduced his pay and hours per week.

“I have had a decrease from 32 straight to 27 riyals per hour,” Memon said. “Luckily, I have had an offer from CMU-Q, but I know a lot of students who are facing problems coping [with their decreased earnings] or finding other jobs.”

“My salary got cut by 42 percent,” said a Residence Hall Community Development Advisor (CDA) who did not want to be named.  The CDA added that the cuts would have an impact on students spending habits as well as for food, and academics. “[The budget cut] might also make potential students reconsider their decisions to come here.”

News that there would be a budget cut came with short notice, according to Fahad Al-Hajri, alumni relations coordinator at HBKU. In fact, he said, the Career Services Center was only notified of the decision two weeks before the start of the academic year in August. At that point they had to start sending out notifications about the cuts to the various departments and universities.

The amount of funds allocated to every department including the Student Center, Residence Halls and universities, for student employment was determined by the Career Services Center, which is responsible for running the HBKU student employment program, based on an estimation of the number of student workers needed by each individual department, according to Al-Saadi.

Plans for some new positions scrapped

Although there were plans to create new positions at the Student Center last year, those plans had to be scrapped because of the new budget constraints, according to Melissa Winter, assistant director of Campus Life at the Student Center.

The number of new jobs available for new student workers in HBKU, including students in the new freshman class of 2017, has as such decreased this year. However, Al-Hajri notes that the number of existing student workers is the same as last year’s, since none of the existing student employees were let go. He explained that when the departments were notified of their allocated funds, they were also given a suggested number of available positions, based on salaries and working hours; that were non-binding provided that the allocated budget was not exceeded.

Less pay or no job at all?

Jamil Karam, the director of Housing and Residence Life (HRL), said some positions in the Residence Halls could only be filled by students and he cited the CDA positions as an example. According to Karam, the cuts to salaries and work hours were affected in order to retain all of their hires while maintaining a certain ratio of CDAs to students living on campus.

“The choice will be for the students to decide whether they want to keep a job with slightly less pay or to have no job at all,” Karam said.

The severity of the cuts varies across departments and positions, so not all students have been affected by the cuts in the same way. Even within the Student Center, Winter notes, some positions have faced worse cuts than others. For example, she said, the student workers in the Campus Life department have had their hours cut by half.

CMU-Q blazes own path

Not every department in HBKU has dealt with the issue in the same way though.  One notable exception is CMU-Q, which has not cut its student workers’ hours or cut their salaries. Memon confirms that his position as a peer tutor for programming in CMU-Q has not been affected by any cuts.

Originally, CMU-Q was allowed 30 student employees per QF’s suggestion, including 13 in academic positions, which pay more and for which there is higher demand, and 17 in non-academic positions, according to Leah Galit, enrollment records coordinator at CMU-Q. The number was a sharp step down from the 100-130 students CMU-Q typically hires every year, Galit said.

“It was really difficult for us to see those numbers, since we start hiring months in advance,” said Hope Rodefer, the director of the academic resource center at CMU-Q.

But the university did not allow its hiring to remain impeded by budget constraints for long. CMU-Q officials scheduled a meeting with QF and agreed to pay the difference out of the university’s own budget, Galit said. As a result, Galit said, she does not expect to have to reduce the number of jobs.

“We’ve not had to make any real cutbacks,” Rodefer said. “According to our past history of academic division requests (requests for positions such as teaching or research assistants and peer tutors) this semester is really no different than the last two years.”

HBKU is urging other universities that expressed dissatisfaction with the cuts to follow CMU-Q’s example, Al-Saadi said, by using their own budgets to make up the difference from the cuts.