Student jobs

Known as HiWi jobs in German, student assistant positions are a chance to earn extra money within the university itself while you complete your degree program. As many of these jobs involve correcting younger students’ assignments and demonstrating calculations in tutorials, they can also help you consolidate your own learning and practice your presentation skills in an unpressured environment.

TU Clausthal’s excellent student-teacher ratios are carried through into the size of tutorial groups, which means that we run a relatively large number of tutorials and need a correspondingly large number of student assistants to teach them, so it is usually easy to find a job if you want one. While other universities may see a single student-assistant job attract more than 100 applicants, teachers at Clausthal frequently have to actively seek out students interested in a position – i.e. there are often more jobs available than there are potential candidates.

The hourly wage for student assistants is €8.44 for winter semester 2011/2012 and €8.61 for summer semester 2012. The number of hours you work per month will depend on your particular contract. Most of our contracts are for 20 to 40 hours per month, meaning student assistants earn around €150 to €350 per month, but contracts with more or fewer hours are possible too. In many cases, the number of contract hours can be decided on an individual basis in discussion with the applicant.

Any job earning you up to €400 per month is classed as a mini-job in the German system, so you will not be subject to social-security contributions or any change in your health-insurance arrangements – which means that, for you, gross pay = take-home pay.

Earnings of up to €4,800 a year, i.e. an average of €400 a month, will not reduce the amount of BAföG funding you are entitled to. (You can check the calculation yourself at www.bafoeg-rechner.de.) The money you earn from a student-assistant job therefore will generally not lead you to lose any BAföG entitlement. This means 100% of your earnings as a student assistant will constitute net income.

• Jobs available at TU Clausthal (you will find student-assistant jobs in the Studentische Hilfskräfte section)