Fostering the Next Generation of IT Talent

The student workforce has long been critical to higher education IT departments. For some institutions, students perform up to 25% of total labor hours. Given higher education’s less competitive salary compared to the tech sector, student workers also serve as a critical talent pipeline program for IT. However, IT departments are struggling to fill student roles and retain students beyond one year in light of competitive hourly wages for entry-level employees.

This report outlines seven tactics for IT departments to develop the most effective student employment programs as possible. These tactics are organized into four sections:

• Diversify student recruitment efforts across campus.
• Professionalize the student work experience, from hiring to evaluations.
• Increase student worker engagement and retention.
• Bridge student workers into full-time employment.

Diversify student recruitment efforts across campus

The first section explores strategies that help IT departments source strong, more diverse candidates. In the long run, this can help IT find the right-fit student workers and support efforts to diversify the workforce.

Tactic 1: Design a formalized student referral system

Beyond advertising at student career fairs, institutions can take advantage of their network of faculty, staff, and on-campus organizations by developing referral systems and guidelines to source a diverse pool of qualified student workers. 

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has a robust student workforce, with 80 to 100 student workers that represent about 25% of labor hours completed by students. Even more impressive, over half of UMBC’s full-time employees today started as student workers or got a second degree at UMBC while working for IT. One component of their student worker program is to encourage IT staff to teach part-time. These staff members then submit referrals for exceptional students in those courses. In the 2021-2022 academic year at UMBC, two IT staff taught in the Information Systems department, while another two taught a one-credit first-year course called “Introduction to an Honors University.”

UMBC estimates it receives about ten referrals for student workers per term. Their referral system increases the likelihood that student workers bring familiarity with critical systems, IT infrastructure, and data security to the role.

To help stakeholders identify good candidates, IT leaders can:

• Develop referral guidelines that outline characteristics desired in a student worker, such as reliability, accountability, and a willingness to learn IT.
• Share these guidelines with campus stakeholders, such as department chairs, faculty members, and staff lecturers.

Tactic 2: Partner with campus organizations to recruit diverse students

While referrals are an invaluable source of talent for the IT organization, hiring managers should take steps to ensure they do not perpetuate existing hiring biases. Among higher education IT employees, only 26% are women and 21% are racial/ethnic minorities—despite the increase in diversity in the general student population in recent years.

Partnering with multicultural organizations on campus helps IT departments tap a more diverse pool of student talent. UMBC partners with their Cybersecurity Center and the Center for Women in IT to hire more students identifying as female and/or as underrepresented minorities (URM). Female student workers are not assigned to the service desk to ensure they are not pigeonholed into work traditionally done by women. 60% of UMBC’s IT student workforce identify as female and/or URM because of these efforts. The division also offers its student workers the opportunity to take independent study courses with an IT staff mentor that focuses on applying their coursework to work problems.

Four components of UMBC’s student worker program

Professionalize the student work experience, from hiring to evaluations

The next section focuses on formalizing the student worker experience. This ensures that IT departments attract student candidates that are serious about the role and will be motivated to grow professionally toward a full-time IT career. This section details four ways to professionalize the student work experience.

Tactic 3: Formalize an application process that vets students and trains them in professional norms

Formalizing the hiring process provides students with legitimate opportunities to improve their professional skills and investment in their work. Establishing guardrails, such as requiring a placement preparation workshop and passing an interview, sets expectations for applicants about their commitments to the role and the significance of their work.

Western Oregon University’s student IT worker application process

Western Oregon University (WO) has a well-established application process. First, their IT team requires students to submit a resume. Accepted applicants then undergo basic professional skills training through the career services center and complete a formal interview prior to receiving an offer for project-based student employment. WOU’s goals through this process are to set expectations for applicants about required commitments in the role, limit the amount of non-position specific coaching supervisors must provide, and ensure that selected students are appropriate for the job.

Once a student is hired, WOU outlines job commitments and responsibilities in a contract, serving as a guide for evaluations and feedback throughout the course of their work.

Tactic 4: Hold student workers to same standards as full-time staff in evaluations

The next tactic is to conduct regular and systematic evaluations. The goal is to motivate student workers to produce higher-quality service, limit exposure to risk, and take a greater sense of ownership over their work. The table below details how Rutgers University overcame common objections to systematic student evaluations.

Increase student worker engagement and retention

The third section explores how to increase the engagement of student workers so that they have an incentive to stay longer. This will reduce training needs and increase the likelihood that supervisors can hand over more complex tasks to students.

Tactic 5: Create a pay scale for student workers

Creating a pay scale for student workers increases their engagement and quality of work by incentivizing skill development and career growth. This enables students to take on higher-complexity work and increased leadership—the experience they want for their resumes. Stepwise pay scales also improve retention by guaranteeing student workers systematic wage increases if they maintain their employment within the IT department.

Towson University’s formalized pay scale offers entry-level students $15 per hour and increases incrementally to $17.50 per hour for managers. Students are eligible for pay increases during their biannual reviews, which take place in June and December. The goal is for students to gain leadership experience (e.g., lead training sessions with faculty) and be better equipped for entry-level roles upon graduation. Towson expanded their student workforce to include 70 student workers supporting 129 FTEs.

• Entry Level– $15.00
• Level 1A – $15.25
• Level 1B – $15.50
• Level 2A – $15.75
• Level 2B -$16.00
• Manager/paraprofessional – $17.50

Tactic 6: Assign student workers high-value, longer-term projects

As critical as they are, some departments fail to move student workers beyond lower-skilled tasks, such as working the help desk. However, giving students opportunities to take on higher-value work benefits both the department and its students. It gives the student more professional experience, may contribute to increased engagement, and enables IT leaders to hand over more complex tasks.

The challenge is creating the infrastructure to support upskilling and supervision. Institutions that have made the investment report that training documents, more tenured student managers, and employees willing to support students are all critical elements—and the payoff can be high. For instance, Rice University created a Student Security Operations Center (SOC) where three student interns work on live threat monitoring. This program piques student interest in a career in cybersecurity by providing real-world experience on a cybersecurity team.

Student SOC Outcomes:

1. Closed out several hundred service tickets.
2. Built dashboards and databases for security reviews
3. Revamped the Rice IT department’s website

Western Oregon University has a strong track record of providing students with meaningful IT work. Here are the infrastructure elements that have enabled them to assign more complex tasks to student workers:

Outline characteristics of potential long-term projects to help IT staff identify opportunities

• Positioned within a functioning business
• Reports to a professional with expertise in the field
• Assignments and responsibilities target field-specific learning outcomes
• Skills developed are transferable to other organizations or companies
• Access to resources and facilities necessary for learning outcomes

Ensure each project proposal includes:

• An assigned supervisor
• Defined learning objectives
• Specific assignments to achieve learning objectives to guarantee rigor and productivity for both student and IT department.
• Preferred qualifications and desired academic background of applicants to ensure high-quality applicants a

Example projects:

• Refreshing instructional technology in a classroom or academic building
• Conducting analysis on metrics available in the ITSM system to evaluate performance against KPIs
• Creating a communication plan and managing communications for the IT service management organization
• Integrating the service management system with other tools to increase proactive servicing of technology

Bridge student workers into full-time employment

The final section explores how to make the leap from part-time work to full-time employment post-graduation. While this strategy is often deployed to keep high-potential undergraduate student workers in seat, the final tactic encourages IT departments to consider graduate students as well.

Tactic 7: Recruit graduate students with scholarships and contingent contracts

Graduate students are often capable of working on specialized, high-value projects on par with full-time employees. Institutions can recruit graduate by offering them scholarships to pay for master’s degrees in exchange for their commitment to work for the IT department part-time. This agreement often leads to graduate students seeking full-time employment at the institution upon graduation.

As one example, UMBC hires graduate students part-time in specialized areas (e.g., data science, cybersecurity, infrastructure, applications, and data analytics) and provides them with partial or full graduate assistantships. Typically, these graduate students stay for at least two years while completing their graduate program. With recent changes, UMBC hired international graduate student workers on curricular and practical training (CPT) and offered contingent contracts to domestic graduate students that allowed them to take on more responsibility and receive higher pay. Many contingent workers end up joining UMBC as full-time employees once roles open in the department. UMBC typically expects to retain these graduate-turned-FTEs for two to three years before they seek employment elsewhere.