A government program isn’t working as intended? Shocking!

Paul Fain reports at Inside Higher Ed.

Making Work-Study Work

Students who participate in federal work-study are more likely to graduate and get a job after college. But those who get the biggest academic benefits from the program — low-income students at public colleges who would have worked anyhow — are the least likely to receive the federal grants.

Those are the primary findings from a newly released study by two researchers at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

While the research found generally positive impacts of the federal work-study program, it also found one surprising downside — participants take on substantially higher debt compared to non-participants with similar characteristics, including income, gender, institution type and other factors.

Students in federal work-study are 21 percentage points more likely to borrow during their first year of college, found the study, which is based on a national sample of 12,200 students. Participants also had a cumulative undergraduate debt load that was $6,263 higher than similar students who were nonparticipants.

A possible explanation for the increased debt is that college financial aid officers typically package loans and work-study grants together, said Judith Scott-Clayton, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of economic and education at Columbia.

That means students who participate are much more likely to also take out loans, the study said.
Scott-Clayton called the finding alarming, adding that it “could ultimately undermine the positive effect of the program.”