Career Services has seen thousands of students opting in for their web resources despite imposing a $5 fee for services that were once free. Over the past several years, there was a $25 user fee for seniors in order to access certain services, such as on-campus recruiting. This semester, Career Services has removed the $25 fee and spread it across four years at $5 each year.
Undergraduate students now have the choice to opt-in for the $5 fee per academic year for web resources. Alumni can also access these services if they choose to pay a $20 fee. More than 3,000 students have chosen to opt-in as of August 20, according to Eileen McGarry, director for UA Career Services.
“We want to keep providing the best resources, but we’re hoping to reduce the pressure of suddenly the $25 comes to you your senior year,” McGarry said. “It’s just $5 now and everything is there.”
The fee will allow students to access a variety of services, such as the UA resume builder, UA career network and Wildcat JobLink. However, some of the services that are still free include career counseling, resume checks and interview stream.
Although the $5 fee might seem expensive to some who are used to free access, over the span of four years it would amount to less than the $25 fee for a student’s senior year, according to McGarry.
The fee will also help career services pay for the resources they provide for students, McGarry added.
“Basically, we’re trying to provide the resources at the lowest cost we possibly can in a challenging budget situation and trying to make the least impact on the student with the fee,” McGarry said.
The career services team vetted the fee through deans, department heads and through the Associated Students for the University of Arizona, in order to see the impact it would have. There was a tremendous amount of support, according to McGarry.
Logan Bilby, marketing junior and a senator for ASUA, worked closely with Career Services on the $5 fee and helped gauge the general opinion and reaction to the fee.
Bilby explained that Career Services is helping facilitate students and push them toward establishing their future.
“This says a lot to me about where Career Services is trying to help me,” Bilby said. “It says a lot about their passion to take me to the job and the internship that I’m most passionate about. As a student, that touches home.”
Some students are also excited about the new fee because of their ability to access a variety of services for an overall lower cost.
“The cost is so low that it’s kind of a no-brainer to do it,” said Stephen Sterling, a philosophy, politics, economics and law senior and a career service employer ambassador. “That year equates to like 42-cents-a-month membership to have access to over a thousand job opportunities, internships and volunteer opportunities.”
Students can opt-in through a link on Career Services’ home page, which will put them through an activation process. Once students are finished editing their settings, they can choose to bill the non-refundable fee to their bursar’s account.
Since this is a user fee, students can choose whether or not they want to access these services. If the student decides to opt-in they have the ability to opt-out at any point if they do not want to pay the $5 fee for the following academic year.
“If students aren’t looking for a job, an internship, or any of those services, they don’t have to opt in,” Sterling said. “But the majority of people at colleges are looking for those things, therefore it’d be irrational not to opt-in.”
