Living wage would make U of M a leader for these times
So, as it turns out, the University of Memphis was two years into a plan to ultimately pay its workers at least $15 an hour.
That’s what University of Memphis president David Rudd revealed to the county this week, after Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris vetoed $1 million in county funds to pay for improvements to its swimming facilities because it hadn’t seen the school’s plans to pay its workers a living wage.
Rudd said that the university, which, at $11.11 an hour, pays the second-highest minimum wage of the six schools which comprise the Tennessee Board of Regents, plans to raise its wages to $15 an hour by 2021.
But regardless of the timetable, what’s clear is this: If the university winds up paying its workers a living wage, it removes itself from being part of the apparatus that keeps people poor in the nation’s secondpoorest large metro area.
And for a university that has been working to enroll struggling students, it helps to show that it pays wages that don’t worsen that struggle.
In 2018, for example, the university supplied its own financial aid, along with Pell Grants and other assistance, to help pay the tuition of 620 incoming freshmen whose parents made less than $50,000 a year. By 2021, it hopes to cover all the tuition and fees for poor freshman.
Poverty impacts college readiness
It also is offering scholarships to high school students who complete a college readiness mentoring program – a necessary effort because in Shelby County more than half of all students who enter a public college have to take remedial courses. That’s all fine and good. But a key predictor of whether youths will wind up needing remedial courses is ... poverty. Poverty such as the kind that forces people, like the university’s custodial workers, to take on second jobs or to work long hours to survive.
We know this because the Government Accountability Office, as well as other entities, tell us so.
In its 2018 K-12 education report, the GAO not only found that poor students tend to enter high school less academically prepared, but that the effects of poverty such as homelessness, hunger and trauma make preparing for college difficult.
Of course. If a youth is constantly worried about whether his or her parent is going to have enough money to cover the rent, or to put food on the table, such worries will likely overshadow any motivation to learn the steps of filling out a college application.
We also know that poorer students often are assigned to remedial classes – which means they are less likely to finish college. A recent state report, in fact, showed that of the 1,610 Shelby County students who entered one of the state’s public colleges in 2012 and who needed remediation in English, only 23 percent earned degrees.
And we also know that the experience of being reared in homes in which a parent is always grappling with trying to bring in enough income to survive, but who never seems to get ahead, also leads many youths who would otherwise choose college to take their chances in the illicit economy, studies have shown.
To them, their parents look like suckers - as does anyone who waits for four years to make a decent income.
All of these factors combined can work to defeat the purpose of any efforts that U of M, as well as other institutions, are embarking on to persuade poorer students to choose college.
Which is why U of M, as one of the top 25 employers in Shelby County, ought to be especially empathetic when it comes to understanding how poverty-level wages hobble people’s lives.
By paying its workers $15 an hour, the school would show that it indeed understands - and is willing to do its part to confront a root cause of why so many youths here either forgo college or don’t finish.
Hopefully, U of M will set an example for more Shelby County employers to follow. Because when people earn enough to live on, they have more leeway to make a life.
Especially for their children.
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa. weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter: @tonyaajw.