I work as a Program Manager for a academic department at a university. I was put in charge/given the responsibility to hire a student assistant for the department. I was like sweet, this’ll be my first time conducting the hiring process all by myself, this’ll be great experience for me.

I published the job ad on Handshake (many universities use this to hire students) and was like “now we wait”. I wish I was exaggerating, but I had received around 50 applications in the first hour. By the time the job posting expired (roughly a week later) I had received 400 applications.

This is a part time position (10-15 hours a week) that pays minimum wage ($15 in my state). The thing that shocked me the most was that about 85% of the applicants were graduate students at the university. It boggled my mind that why would grad students with bachelors degrees be applying to a minimum wage job with no benefits (and part time!). Also, almost all of these grad students that applied were South Asian (primarily Indian).

I talked to a co-worker about it and she said that times are hard and people are looking for anything. Just to clarify, this isn’t a “Graduate Assistantship” position (those help pay tuition). I was looking for an undergraduate student for the position so all of the grad student applicants were automatically not gonna make the cut. I felt extremely bad because so many of them had emailed me personally and messaged me on LinkedIn about the job.

This job market is horrible for everyone, including students. Just wanted to share this to see if anyone else in Higher Education can relate.