RE: using wcs to raise money

["Virginia L. Galloway" <xxxvlg@basil.stthom.edu>]

I read all the postings about this issue with great interest, at least in 
part because I was reading from the perspective of a just-graduated and 
subsequently just-unemployed tutor.  As a small, private, Roman Catholic 
school, the University of St. Thomas does not receive state funding, and 
our Learning Resource Center is both small and unable to pay tutors much 
more than minimum wage.  Those of us who work/have worked as tutors do so 
more as a labor of love than for the great profit involved.  If there has 
been money to be made for "outside" work, it has been because we worked 
on referral, and we charged for it according to a sliding scale which was 
higher than the hourly rate we received from UST.  We also did it on an 
"as-we-have-time" basis.  I feel quite certain that, should UST ever seek 
to implement such a profit-making consultancy business on the side, those 
of us who were/are tutors would very reasonably expect to make 
considerably more money for our efforts than other student employees.  I 
can also foresee problems along the lines of "Well, I'll just tell Father 
that I didn't finish my term paper in a timely fashion because I was 
involved in the X-Corp. project."

Individual tutors might be able to juggle the workload (I, for example, 
was an adult student who once worked as a copy editor for a minor 
metropolitan newspaper), but is it realistic to think that a 19-year-old 
writing tutor, no matter how good, can budget his/her time well enough to 
meet the demands of schoolwork, tutoring, and extra stuff?  The concept 
of writing centers doing consultancy work isn't bad, but the reality is 
that the potential for tutor burnout, sacrifice of schoolwork for profit, 
and shunting aside of student needs in favor of "paying customers" might 
be too high.

Bottom line:  Should not the "product" of a writing center be 
improved student performance rather than university revenue?

Virginia Galloway
Master in Liberal Arts, 1997
University of St. Thomas