Obamacare Could Force Student Journalists to Stop Working

Here’s another entry for the long list of
regrettable, unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act:
Universities are reducing student journalists’ work hours to remain
compliant with federal law.

The situation is complicated, and the feds haven’t exactly
clarified matters. In general, the government now requires
employers to provide health care coverage to employees who work
more than 30 hours a week. Does that include students who work for
their campus publications? Such students are scarcely
compensated—exemptions in the federal minimum wage law allow
universities to skirt that obligation—but they certainly work long
(if uneven) hours. Even so, they don’t fall into other categories
that might qualify for healthcare exemption, such as interns or
work-study participants, notes the
Student Press Law Center:

How student journalists fall under university policies and the
health care law is unclear.

“There’s just a lot of gray out there,” said Laura Widmer,
general manager of The Iowa State Daily. “And I don’t know that
there’s anything definitive that we can embrace as gospel.”

Rachel Arnedt, an attorney with Wiggin and Dana LLP who
specializes in health and benefit plans, agreed: There aren’t clear
answers at this point because the law is so new.

“I really think this just is going to shake out over the next
couple of years,” Arnedt said. “The IRS does say that it’s
continuing to think about these situations and will continue to
come out with new guidance as it thinks is necessary.”

Student journalists are part of a niche category of employees:
workers often paid by stipend who don’t track their sporadic hours
and whose jobs aligns closely with their education. Some won’t
reach that 30-hour threshold, but upper-level editors and top
reporters may far surpass it. The journalists who hold multiple
jobs on campus may very easily cross that line as well.

Since it isn’t clear, universities are handling matters
differently. Some are now enforcing hard caps of 30 hours a week on
student journalists’ work schedules.

But that’s terrible! For many college-aged journalists, their
work at the campus daily is their education. They are
getting on-the-job training and learning the valuable skills of
writing and reporting, which they will carry with them into
post-college employment—even if they don’t become
journalists. Imagine schools telling kids not to study too
hard, or spend more than a couple hours on homework each week, out
of fear of federal reprisal.

A hard cap of 30 hours could also disproportionately hurt poorer
students who have to spend some of that time doing university jobs
that actually pay—cafeteria work, for instance—in order to afford
tuition or board. Do those hours eat into the 30? If student
journalists are being counted as employees, they do.

There will also be consequences for campus accountability, notes
The College Fix. While student journalists aren’t professionals,
they are still the best chroniclers of waste, fraud, and abuse in
bloated higher education bureaucracies. Students have broken
stories of academic and athletic fraud as well, often to the
embarrassment and disdain of their administrations. For
universities that want to stop campus publications from keeping
them honest, Obamacare certainly provides a great excuse, according to The College
Fix:

And they may be the only source of accountability on
campus if the board is just a pawn of the administration
and the faculty are too cowed to speak (perhaps more likely at
private institutions).

Forcing student journalists to keep their hours to a preset
limit to avoid Obamacare mandates can make a school look both good
and bad – sure, it’s trying to avoid providing health benefits, but
it’s also trying to ensure students don’t neglect the rest of their
education.

Either way, the result is the same: less accountability for
administrations that are already plenty creative in
avoiding public scrutiny.

This messy situation speaks to the erosion of individual
decision-making under Obamacare. I’m sure many (if not most)
student journalists would rather be free to work long hours at
their campus publication than get paid minimum wage or have some
claim to healthcare that will in effect necessitate a university
crackdown on work hours. Not because they like being volunteers,
but because their work is going to open doors for them after
college.

As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I worked for
the campus publication, The Michigan Daily. During the
year that I served as editorial page editor, I’m quite sure I was
typically working at least 30 hours a week. The students in the
news section were undoubtedly working even longer hours. That
experience allowed me to obtain several post-college internships
(either unpaid or minimally paid via stipend), and eventually,
employment in the field of journalism. If, during any of these
steps, my employers had been required to provide me healthcare or
pay me money, they would have sooner done without me. If that were
the case, I simply wouldn’t be employed in journalism today.

I suspect this is the case for many young journalists, which is
why the Affordable Care Act is so frustrating. Clumsy federal
regulation strikes again.