They’ll Work for Education

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By LISA BELKIN
Published: April 14, 2009

For 10 hours each week, Anna Rice can be found behind a desk in the hallway of a dorm at Northeastern University in Boston, her books spread in front of her so she can study. Every so often students will approach the desk, and Ms. Rice will ask for ID, and rustle up the vacuum or pool table equipment or DVDs they have come to borrow for the evening. Then she’ll go back to her work. For this she receives $10 an hour, up to, in her case, $1,250 a semester, which she uses for groceries and spending money.
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From top, J. Kevin Fitzsimons, Bryce Vickmark and Jamie Martin for The New York Times

WORK-STUDY STIFFS Chloe Hamrick (top) gives tours at Ohio Wesleyan. Anna Rice does light dorm duty at Northeastern. With so much demand for jobs at Auburn, Justin Callaway couldn’t get work-study.
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Ms. Rice’s job, through the federal work-study program, is one piece of the financial puzzle that college has become, dependent on the government, the economy and, to some extent, the whims and work ethics of each year’s crop of teenagers.

Time was when work-study meant taking shifts at the campus commons, wearing a paper hat and serving mystery meat and creamed spinach as your classmates shuffled through. But with dining services mostly outsourced, and everything about college life more complex, work-study jobs have come to fill a variety of needs — beyond the obvious one of putting cash in the pockets of undergraduate and graduate students. Some want to develop a skill, or beef up a résumé. Some seek an “in” with a certain professor. Ms. Rice’s goal was to make as small a dent in study time as possible.

Work-study lies somewhere between a grant and a loan in the college-aid universe — the institution promises to make a job available, at a rate of pay that is at or slightly above minimum wage, up to a maximum that depends on other ingredients of your financial aid package. The government pays 75 percent of those wages, and the college pays 25 percent. You don’t get the money unless you put in the hours.

Right about now, participating institutions are learning how much money they will have to allot (based on a complex formula that includes size of the student body and percentage of students in financial need), and thus how many jobs they can offer for the fall. Students typically have to apply for jobs, a process that is becoming more challenging — even with stimulus money on the way.

Established as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, work-study mirrors the economy: demand for the jobs is lower in good times and higher in bad times.

It was not that long ago that campuses had more jobs than students who were willing to do them. A year ago the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor designated four times as many students to be eligible as there were available jobs, because most students simply never signed on. Reasons for sniffing at self-help aid vary. Some parents don’t want their children to work, particularly freshman year, for fear it will interfere with their studies. Some students are in time-intensive majors and can’t fit in regular work shifts. Families somehow pony up more money or the students take out loans — the average award is just $1,500 a year.

In the last year, the ratio of jobs to students has decreased, says Pam Fowler, the director of financial aid at Michigan, and she expects that trend will continue. “We are definitely seeing an increase in student acceptance” of work-study jobs. Ms. Fowler is confident Michigan will be able to offer enough jobs next year for the students who need (and accept) them, but administrators at some small, less-wealthy colleges are not as sure.

At Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., Jose A. Mazorra is hoping that its yearly work-study allotment of $150,000 will last until the school year ends. He is human resources coordinator at Lynn, and this year saw the largest number of students taking the offered positions.

In Virginia, Danville Community College began turning students away this year. Time was when every student who qualified for financial aid was able to get a $7-an-hour work-study job. But this past fall, the college started ranking students by need, and giving jobs to those at the top of the list. The city of Danville “has one of the highest unemployment rates in Virginia,” says Andrea J. Burney, the director of public relations for the 6,300-student college, which means students are unlikely to find work off campus either.

That is the bind that Justin Callaway, a junior and aspiring entrepreneur at Auburn University in central Alabama, finds himself in. Last year, he qualified for work-study but didn’t take the job, opting to start a restaurant delivery business instead. That failed, and this year he was denied work-study in his financial aid package. There were too many students ahead of him, and the jobs ran out. He looked for work in town, but most required 25 or 30 hours a week, and he worried about having sufficient time to study (work-study workweeks tend not to exceed 20 hours).

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Lisa Belkin writes the Motherlode blog at NYTimes.com.
Next Article in Education (19 of 26) » A version of this article appeared in print on April 19, 2009, on page ED26 of the New York edition.
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