What Obama’s Overtime Rule Could Mean for Colleges

This week the Obama administration released a final rule that will extend overtime pay to millions more American workers, including hundreds of thousands of lower-level salaried employees on college campuses. Much of the attention has focused on the impact on postdoctoral fellows, the overworked, underpaid backbone of the academic research enterprise. But it’s not just postdocs who will benefit from the rule, which will double the annual salary cutoff below which workers are generally eligible for overtime pay, raising it to $47,476. Many entry-level and midlevel professionals — from admissions officers to athletic trainers to student-aid administrators — will qualify too.