Federal Work-Study Rankings:
America's Best Colleges Remain Among the Worst

A new study by CHESS shows America's best colleges remain among the worst for community service.  While most colleges and universities spend 14.5 percent of their allocated Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds for community service activities, schools like the University of California Berkeley, University of Notre Dame, Bowdoin College, and Davidson College spent less than 7 percent in 2001-02.

Overall, US News top colleges improved the percent spent on community service at a rate faster than most institutions but the average for the group still fell slightly below the national average. Rice University increased its expenditures dramatically from 6.6 percent in 1999-00 to 71 percent in 2001-02. The US News top liberal arts colleges fared much worse with only a 1 percent overall increase which places them at 11.4 percent. The national average is 14.5 percent.

The research study, Federal Work-Study: How America's Colleges Use Federal Funds, replicates a widely publicized study done by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (see The Other College Rankings: When it comes to national service, America's "best colleges" are it's worst). The results of that study were published by Newsweek, the Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post.

Community service is only one component of the FWS program. It was established by Congress in 1964 to help financially needy students pay for college by working while attending school. While the program has always had a community service component, schools were not required to employ students in community service jobs until the 1992 Higher Education Amendments were passed. The current legislation requires schools to spend at least 7 percent of allocated funds on community service. It also requires schools to employ at least one student as a reading tutor, yet 443 schools failed to do so during the most recent award year for which data is available.

Senators have introduced a bill to increase the community service spending requirement to 25%. President Bush has proposed it should be increased to 50% but college officials have indicated such a drastic increase would force colleges out of the program. Over 700 colleges have already left the program since 1990.

The study provides details of how 3,291 colleges and universities, 50 states and nine U.S. territories administer over $1 billion in federal funds. It lists the schools that receive the most FWS funds like New York University which was allocated over $11.2 million. It identifies the schools that have the most effective JLD programs like California State University (CSU) Long Beach that developed 6,842 jobs that paid over $65.6 million for only $30,000. The study also identifies schools that could be penalized for returning more than 10 percent of their allocation like Duke University which returned $871,740. The study provides school and state rankings for such items as allocations, highest average earnings, unused funds, JLD effectiveness, community service, America Reads, and America Counts. One of the tables from the study is included in this newsletter.

 

Study Available from Lulu Press
Federal Work-Study: How America's Colleges Use Federal Funds
ISBN: 1-4116-0111-4
http://www.lulu.com/chessconsulting