Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Mercer Cluster
Friday, Apr 19, 2024
Interested in Working for the Cluster? Ask about joining our Discord!

Academic Resource Center: poorly staffed, poorly funded

When students need academic help there is always one place to turn to on campus: the Academic Resource Center. 
They provide tutoring over a wide variety of subjects, and are always there to help. 
The students receive better grades and the tutors earn some cash and a good addition to the resume. 
As a student, I have not used the ARC, but I have been a tutor there. 
For one semester I tutored HIS 111 and thoroughly enjoyed myself. 
Teaching and helping other students better their understanding of the material was amazing for me. 
I enjoyed my time tutoring so much that I wanted to take on more classes the following semester and my teachers supported the idea greatly.  This did not work out quite so well though. 
The next semester as I was preparing myself to tutor once more, I was informed that the ARC did not have the adequate funds to pay me. 
They simply had taken on the maximum number of paid tutors already and were unable to hire any more. 
Being unable to pay me, the only option available was to volunteer to tutor.  As I was and am a full time student who desperately needed a job, I did not have the time to spare to simply volunteer for the position. 
Being a non-work study student, being a tutor is the only readily available on-campus job that I could have held, but because of the lack of funds for the ARC it is not possible.
In another instance, my German professor was trying to work out getting a tutor for his classes. 
A student said that she would be willing to hold the position, and had filled out then necessary paperwork for the ARC, but in the end she received the same message, ‘We do not have the funds to hire you.’ 
Without knowing that she had been turned down, a student from my class went to the ARC asking for the German tutor and received only mocking laughter. 
To my knowledge other language classes have many available paid tutors through the ARC, but the German class gets none. 
Each subject offered should have at least one tutor, period. 
The students who offer their time and experience to help fellow students should be rewarded for their efforts. 
The lack of funds of the ARC force subjects to have no tutors or only those who have the time to volunteer. 
That the campus can afford to build a stadium, field house, create a new football team, and have an extreme facelift, but the ARC cannot afford to pay at least one tutor for each subject is ridiculous. 
With more funding not only would grades of students increase across campus, but students would be given a reliable, non-work study accessible, source of income. 
The ARC needs more funding.


Powered by SNworks Solutions by The State News
All Content © 2024 The Mercer Cluster, Mercer University