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Dave Martin/AP
The Hechinger Report
Students who counted on work-study jobs now struggle to pay their bills
Pandemic precautions, remote learning leave many students with less income to pay for college
By Matt Krupnick
October 22, 2020
The 20 hours a week Perla Ortiz worked in the St. Edward’s University
admissions office last year was the glue that kept her academic life
together. Paid through the federal work-study program, the $1,500 she
earned per semester covered the cost of books, groceries and other
necessities.
Now admissions has gone virtual because of Covid-19 and Ortiz has lost
her campus job at the Austin, Texas, private university. Unable to
afford rent in Austin, she’s moved back with her family in El Paso.
“I’m barely able to pay for expenses,” said Ortiz, 21, whose work-study
role was to mail acceptance letters and scholarship notices to
applicants.
Work-study jobs may seem like a perk, but in a normal year, the program
provides nearly $1.2 billion in help for college for more than 612,000
students across the country. They are paid at least minimum wage for
part-time jobs ranging from receptionists in college offices to
attendants in campus gyms or aides in local schools. The federal
government typically covers about 50 percent of the wages, and the
institutions pay the rest.
Many of those jobs were on campuses that have gone completely or mostly
online during the pandemic, and colleges and universities have not been
able to adapt all of them to this new reality.
Work-study annually provides nearly $1.2 billion for more than 612,000 students.
In a national survey conducted by an institute at the University of
California, Berkeley, 53 percent of low-income and working-class
students said they had lost wages from on-campus jobs.
That, compounded by confusing changes to work-study rules, has thrown some students’ finances out of balance.
“The loss of this important form of financial aid can be devastating,”
the U.S. Department of Education said in an advisory about
Covid-related interruptions in work-study jobs.
St. Edward’s told Ortiz that she must work on campus to get paid
through the work-study program, she said, even though the office where
she was assigned is shut down.
“I understand the circumstances are hectic,” Ortiz said, “but when my
living situation is affected by it there’s a sense of urgency on my
part.”
Even in normal times, students whose financial aid offers say they will
be eligible for work-study jobs don’t automatically get them; they have
to apply and be accepted. Nor is work-study guaranteed from one year to
the next.
St. Edward’s is trying to help students affected by the shutdown find
other jobs, said Jennifer Beck, the university’s financial aid director.
“If a student doesn’t get a work-study job, there are still
plenty of other opportunities for employment on campus,” Beck said. She
said there are also off-campus work-study positions available with
nonprofit partners.
Ortiz said she hasn’t been able to find one from which she could earn
as much as the job she lost, which she said paid “well above minimum
wage.”
And though she’s a senior, a problem for other students is that, unlike
income from work-study jobs, any pay they earn from non-work-study jobs
counts against them when colleges are determining how much financial
aid to give them in the following year.
Colleges and universities are allowed — but not required — to use
federal funds to pay students who lost work-study jobs due to the
pandemic, said a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education who
asked not to be named. Schools can also choose to shift some of those
funds to emergency grants for students in need, which St. Edward’s and
other institutions said they have done.
The work-study program was already widely criticized for
disproportionately helping higher-income rather than lower-income
students. That’s because of a nearly-60-year-old formula under which
the money is distributed to institutions based on how much they
received the year before. More prestigious universities and colleges
that have been involved the longest — and generally serve more affluent
students — get more than less prestigious ones.
Private four-year universities enroll only 14 percent of
undergraduates, but receive 38 percent of work-study money, while
community colleges, which take almost half of all students and serve
large numbers of low-income Americans, get 20 percent, according to the
Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment.
That means that, even before the pandemic, a student at a private
university from a family in the top quarter of income was more likely
to get work-study money than a student at a community college from the
bottom quarter.
St. Edward’s paid about $580,000 to 305 federal work-study students
last year, Beck said, while New York University paid more than $8
million to 3,400 students in 2018-19, the last year for which federal
figures are available.
Several schools that get among the largest federal work-study payouts,
including NYU, the City University of New York system and the
University of Southern California, either declined to answer questions
about what is happening to their students this year, or did not respond
to interview requests.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has proposed significantly reducing the program.
As some work-study opportunities disappear, among the students left in
the lurch is Leslie Hinojo, a 21-year-old single mother who in June
finished her first year at Green River College, a community college
south of Seattle.
Hinojo worked 20 hours a week last year as a receptionist in the campus
career and advising center, but said she was told in June that her
position would no longer be available because of the pandemic.
“They really didn’t say much to me. They said if the job was posted again I was welcome to apply again.”
Leslie Hinojo, who lost her work-study job because of the pandemic
“They really didn’t say much to me,” said Hinojo, who is trying to
figure out her future while temporarily living with relatives in
Mexico. “They said if the job was posted again I was welcome to apply
again.”
Some institutions are finding remote jobs for work-study students. At
the University of California, Santa Barbara, for instance, these
include data entry, coding, graphic design, customer service and
running social media.
Missing out on work-study jobs can damage more than a student’s bank
account, said Judith Scott-Clayton, an associate professor of economics
and education at Teachers College at Columbia University who tracks
federal work-study spending. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this
story, is housed at Teachers College.) The program provides valuable
work experience, she said.
Students at Auburn University answer calls before the Covid-19
pandemic. Work-study jobs annually provide nearly $1.2 billion to more
than 612,000 students, but the program has been thrown into disarray as
campuses impose Covid-19 restrictions or go virtual Credit: Dave
Martin/AP
“It can be a very meaningful part of a student’s college experience,”
she said. “It’s not so much the money. It’s the type of jobs.”
Among students affected nationwide are tutors with America
Reads/America Counts, which pairs work-study college students with
children at nearby schools who need reading or math help. Arizona State
University, which has more than 2,000 work-study students each year,
including many with America Reads/America Counts, is trying to figure
out what to do with the tutors as schools remain virtual, said Melissa
Pizzo, Arizona State’s associate vice president for enrollment services.
Several universities, including the University of Michigan, said they are providing more work-study jobs this year.
Officials in the Houston Community College system have been scrambling
to find replacement positions for students who lost their work-study
jobs, said Bianca Matlock, the system’s financial aid director. The
colleges are trying to partner with the city of Houston to fill those
gaps, she said.
The system also hopes to be part of a federal experiment to pair
work-study students with private companies, which is prohibited under
current rules. The Houston schools hope to team up with businesses at
the local port and at medical facilities, Matlock said, which could
help students jump-start careers at a time of high unemployment.
The change would also help pandemic-proof the work-study program by opening more opportunities if a job disappears, she said.
“Not all students are going to school to get a degree,” Matlock said.
“Some are hoping to start work in a year, and we need to cater to those
students as well.”
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