Gross earnings for a part-time recreation assistant| Hours a week | At $10.00 an hour | At $16.50 an hour | At $21.50 an hour |
|---|
| 6 hours | $60 | $99 | $129 |
| 12 hours | $120 | $198 | $258 |
| 20 hours | $200 | $330 | $430 |
| 12 hours a week over 36 weeks | $4,320 | $7,128 | $9,288 |
Access to the facility is the most common extra, and it is worth more than it looks to someone who would pay for a membership.
Most campuses extend facility access to the staff who work in the building, and some extend it to student workers as a condition of the appointment. On a per-term basis that is worth the price of a monthly membership.
The second extra is training. Recreation roles often come with certification for first aid, CPR or aquatic supervision, and those credentials carry into roles after graduation that do not pay much more at the start.
The third is schedule flexibility, because a facility has to be covered seven days a week. That makes the role one of the easier campus jobs to fit around a course timetable.
Our guide to flexible part time jobs for students covers how the availability conversation works.
Do recreation assistant jobs come with benefits?
Benefits follow the hours threshold, and most recreation roles sit below it.
The campus thresholds are lower than in most industries. Health coverage at one national retailer starts at 25 hours a week, and coffee shop benefits start at 20 hours, and a 12 hour recreation schedule clears neither.
Where a campus runs its own scheme, the position may come with a meal plan, a book store discount or facility access rather than medical coverage.
These are smaller benefits than a health plan, but they are the ones a campus actually offers to student workers.
One practical detail is worth checking. If the role is funded through work study, the hours are capped by the aid package, which usually runs at around 10 to 15 hours a week.
Our guide to work study jobs on campus hiring covers those caps and the difference between work study and regular student employment.
Which campuses hire recreation assistants?
Larger campuses with a full recreation portfolio hire most, and they hire them year round rather than by season.
The volume sits with the big institutions, where the facility list is long and each site needs its own desk cover. A small college usually combines the recreation desk with the campus centre desk, so the role is smaller and more varied.
The hiring pattern follows the facility calendar. Maintenance and set-up hours are quieter, and the peak is at the start of the term when the intramural leagues and the fitness classes fill up.
Our guide to weekend part time jobs near me covers why weekend cover is the busiest part of the week in this kind of facility.
Where recreation assistant work comes from| Setting | Hours pattern | What to check |
|---|
| Large university recreation centre | Early mornings and evenings | How many roles the desk covers |
| Small college combined desk | Varied across the day | How many roles the desk covers |
| Intramural and club support | Seasonal evenings and weekends | Whether the extra hours are paid |
How do you find a campus recreation job?
Search the recreation centre and the athletics department, because the job rarely sits under a generic student employment title.
Three search terms work. The recreation centre careers page lists facility assistant and desk roles directly. The athletics or intramural department lists the programme support roles. And the central student employment site lists the work study eligible versions.
Two questions settle it. Ask whether the hours are paid at the same rate for desk work and for programme support, and ask whether certification is provided, because a role that pays for your training is worth more than a slightly higher hourly rate.
Our guide to evening part time jobs hiring near you covers the shift patterns that dominate facility work, where the evening hours are the ones worth having.
What changes about campus recreation hiring next?
Expect the desk to shrink as booking moves online, and expect the floor staff to do more.
Three forces shape the next two years. Online booking has removed most of the counter work, which leaves the role doing more monitoring and more programme support. Campus wellbeing spending has kept participation high, which keeps the hours on the rota full.
The pressure is on the pay scale. Campus hourly scales move with state minimum wage rules, so the floor rises slowly, and the bands at the top depend on the department budget rather than on the market.
For a candidate the practical conclusion is that the role is worth most at a campus where the certification comes with it, because that credential survives graduation and the hourly rate does not.
Next steps
Apply to the recreation centre directly and ask about the certification before you compare the rate.
- Check the campus wage scale, where published rates run from $10.00 to $21.50 an hour
- Ask whether certification and first aid training are provided and paid
- Work out which hours you can cover, since evenings carry the busiest facility use
- Ask whether desk work and programme support pay the same rate
- Confirm whether the role is work study and what the hour cap is
- Check whether the post comes with facility access for the term
One final thought. The rates here come from published campus policies and the federal handbook, which is the best guide available before an application.
gov/understand-aid/types/work-study">Federal Student Aid work study page sets out the programme rules, including the hourly-only payment rule and the federal minimum wage floor that every work study employer must meet.
Photo: Fotospks, Pixabay Content License, via Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/photos/student-books-school-teacher-7378904/)
Fazlur Rahman
