Student Employees: Your Next IT Investment

Jonathan Lord, Associate Director, Classroom & Device Solutions, Azusa Pacific University

In the complex landscape of higher education IT, the constant pressure to "do more with less" can feel overwhelming. But the answer may already be walking around campus: your students. Maybe you’ve have had mixed experiences with student staffing in the past, viewing them as inexpensive labor at best, and ineffective employees at worst. However, you can achieve real and irreplaceable success by treating students as collaborative partners and future professionals, unlocking powerful (and often overlooked) benefits that can revitalize your department.

Students Emphasize the Importance of Standardization and Documentation

In our fast-paced IT environment, we often fall into the "just get it done" mindset. We prioritize solving immediate crises over investing in thorough standardization and documentation. But we also know that relying on institutional knowledge is fragile. This is where student employees become an unexpected force for organizational excellence.

By nature, student employees have high turnover (we do want them to graduate, after all). To make the most of their time with us, onboarding them demands process clarity. When managers are forced to create robust and easy-to-digest training materials and documentation, it benefits the entire department. A well-documented process for troubleshooting Wi-Fi, setting up new equipment, or handling a common application error doesn't just accelerate a student's learning, it ensures consistency for full-time staff and can even lead to better help articles and educational materials for our end users.

At Azusa Pacific University (APU), we’ve utilized our university’s LMS (Canvas) to build an entire training course for our student employees, complete with quizzes and password-protected modules for them to demonstrate their learned skills in person. It automates onboarding, serves as an internal knowledge base for our own processes, and ensures we are regularly looking at and updating our processes.

Students are Pipelines for Future IT Talent

One of the most profound benefits of a strong student employment program is the creation of a natural talent pipeline. It’s an investment that pays dividends long after graduation day.

My own career serves as a case study: I studied music in college and never intended to go into IT full-time. It all started as a simple student technician job, which evolved into a student supervisor role, which led to a full-time staff technician position after graduation and eventually progressed into my current Associate Director role.

“One of the most profound benefits of a strong student employment program is the creation of a natural talent pipeline. It’s an investment that pays dividends long after graduation day.”

This isn't an isolated incident, either. In fact, nearly one-third of APU's current full-time IT staff are former APU IT student employees, many of whom didn’t even major in a computer-related field. This means that onethird of our staff required little-to-no recruiting, needed no cultural onboarding, and were already intimately familiar with our systems and environment on their first day. And many of these might never have discovered their passion for the IT field if not for these jobs! By offering practical experience across diverse roles, we effectively build our future with employees who are already great cultural fits, dramatically reducing turnover and the costly, lengthy process of external hiring.

Students Increase Your Department's Perspective and Campus Reach

The student body is your primary client, yet most IT departments lack staff who truly represent that diversity. Student employees instantly solve this perspective gap.

I’ve had the pleasure of supervising students from virtually every major: Computer Science, Nursing, Psychology, Music, Business, Biology… the list goes on. And they all bring skills and viewpoints to the workplace that a traditional IT hiring search might never capture. Marketing and English majors write excellent knowledge-based articles. Student athletes understand the importance of teamwork and leadership dynamics. A nursing student’s bedside manner can calm some of the most challenging customer service situations I’ve seen. These diverse perspectives lead to more empathetic service design and creative problem-solving.

Even beyond normal work, students also become invaluable advocates for IT in their social circles and across campus. I have witnessed many instances on APU's internal social media app where a fellow student will post a technical question or complaint, only to have one of our student employees swiftly and professionally reply with either an immediate solution or by asking for patience and understanding as we work on the issue. This peer-to-peer advocacy dramatically increases the department's trust, reach, and perceived responsiveness, giving IT a team of on-the-ground brand ambassadors.

Conclusion: The Unquantifiable ROI

Finally, there is another benefit that may not have a clear, immediate return on investment in a spreadsheet but is perhaps the most transformative: increased morale and fulfillment for everyone. Social media is full of claims that college students today are lazy and unmotivated. In my experience, the issue often lies not with the students but with us as supervisors not taking the time to learn how to motivate them. In a world full of polished social media facades, overwhelming consumerism, and AI-generated content, students are deeply seeking a place where they can feel like they can be their real, authentic selves and be a part of something bigger. They want purpose.

If we can foster a workplace that is documented, transparent, purposeful, and appreciative, it's not just our students that benefit; it's our entire IT staff. It elevates the culture of the whole department and, by extension, the entire university. Your student employees truly are your next great IT investment, delivering both immediate operational value and a lasting legacy of partnership and growth.

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