In an attempt to clarify the byzantine rules related to Obamacare work hour calculations, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has just released its final guidance on the approach to be taken by colleges and universities.

The ruling impacts both adjunct faculty and student workers significantly.

The upshot of the complicated regulation from the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service:

• On adjuncts, colleges will be considered on solid ground if they credit instructors for 1 ¼ hours of preparation time for each hour they spend in the classroom, and instructors should be credited for any time they spend in office hours or other required meeting time.
• On student workers, the IRS opted to exclude work-study employment from any count of work hours, but the administration declined to provide an exemption for student workers over all. As a result, colleges and universities will be required to provide health insurance to teaching and research assistants who work more than 30 hours a week.

The issues of how to count the hours of part-time instructors and student workers have consumed college officials and faculty groups for much of the last 18 months, ever since it became clear that the Affordable Care Act definition of a full-time employee as working 30 hours or more a week was leading some colleges to limit the hours of adjunct faculty members, so they fell short of the 30-hour mark.

All that the government said in its initial January 2013 guidance about the employer mandate under the health care law was that colleges needed to use “reasonable” methods to count adjuncts’ hours.

In federal testimony and at conferences, college administrators and faculty advocates have debated the appropriate definition of “reasonable,” with a focus on calculating the time that instructors spend on their jobs beyond their actual hours in the classroom. The American Council on Education, higher education’s umbrella association and main lobbying group, proposed a ratio of one hour of outside time for each classroom hour, while many faculty advocates have pushed for a ratio of 2:1 or more.

….The adjunct issue has received most of the higher education-related attention about the employer mandate, but the final regulations have significant implications for campuses that employ significant numbers of undergraduate and graduate students, too.

…The updated guidance grants the latter exemption for hours of work study, given, it states, that “the federal work study program, as a federally subsidized financial aid program, is distinct from traditional employment in that its primary purpose is to advance education.”

But all other student work for an educational organization must be counted as hours of service for purposes of the health care mandate, Treasury and IRS said.