Possible work-study funding cuts worry Cabrini staff members

By Cecelia Heckman
April 21, 2017

Students tend to have a lot on their plates. Classes, homework, extracurriculars, social life, family obligations and much more bog down their busy schedules. Yet, many students also find time in their lives to work one or multiple jobs while in school in order to have money for everything else. At Cabrini, many of those students are work-study employees.

This year, about 200 Cabrini students work in this federal program through their on-campus jobs. However, those 200 students may soon find themselves in a difficult situation in their upcoming years, as President Trump’s recently released budget proposal calls for “significant” cuts to federal work-study funding.

The work-study program is unlike most other federal aid because the money is contingent on the students working on campus and getting paid for that work. At Cabrini, the typical work-study amount allotted is $1500 per student per year, meaning they can earn up to that amount throughout the course of the year.

According to Betsy Gingerich, the director of financial aid, about 40 different departments throughout campus currently employ at least one work study student, though some areas like Dixon Center have almost 50 students through this budget.

“Every department can apply to be eligible for work study funding, and a lot do,” Gingerich said.

She explained that the work study funding is actually allocated to each school, then the school divides that money up between the students who demonstrate financial need. However, because the money is allocated to the school rather than to the student directly, one of the major criticisms of the federal work-study program is that the money tends to be allocated to middle-class students rather than to those most in need. However, Cabrini tries to break that stigma when giving work study money to its students.

The funding is allocated nationally to the schools based on how old the institution is, how long they have been participating in work-study, size of full-time enrollment and the institution’s tuition revenue, among other factors. Because of those criteria, Cabrini tends to be on the lower end of work-study funding, this year receiving less than $200,000.

“There are schools, larger universities, that have millions of dollars of federal work study funds,” Gingerich said. “There are schools that struggle to figure out how to spend all of their money because they have such a large allocation, whereas there are schools like us where we spend every penny and more because we have students who actually want to work.”

“We just have a needier population of students,” she said. “I believe it’s not necessarily the funding, I think it’s how they’re allocating it to the schools. If we had a larger budget we could do more with it.”

In fact, so many students at Cabrini are using and relying on work-study money that Cabrini often contributes its own funding towards the program. Nationally, it is required that schools receiving federal work-study funding must also themselves match the funding by 25 percent. However, Cabrini each year matches the funding 100 percent in order to ensure that all students who should receive work-study funding are able to.

Many students find the work-study opportunities especially helpful because they can sometimes get them involved in the future career they are interested in, or at least an atmosphere that will help them prepare for post-graduation work.

Anne Schwelm, the assistant director of the library, said her work-study students get the chance to do just that.

“We figure out what people’s majors are and then we might ask them for particular help,” Schwelm said. “[We] had a couple of students who were strong with spreadsheets and had to have a report run about the number of items that had circulated and who was borrowing them by different status, and so they helped with that. And then there’s a young man who worked for us and he designed the National Library Week advertisement and promotions that we’re doing. So we try and put their talents to use, so that would be something that [they] could put on their resume.”

At the library, Schwelm works with about 25 undergraduate work-study students. She brings in new students each year but especially likes to work with upperclassmen who have been working at the library for a couple of years now.

“We like to rehire returning students because it takes a good six to eight weeks to train our students with all of their duties and learning the library management system, the circulation system, and checking in and checking out, and reserves and DVDs, and closing the building if they close the building and helping to open and taking care of the computers and printers, things like that,” Schwelm said.

The work-study position is one where the students get a lot of different experiences, not just manning a station. In fact, that is one of the requirements that the financial aid and human resources offices look for when giving funding to different departments.

“In order to be eligible for federal work study funds, departments must submit a job description,” Gingerich said. “It has to be students aren’t allowed to be sitting there doing homework, they’re supposed to be doing the job.”

Schwelm said the work-study students at the library get plenty of different experiences throughout their time working.

“It’s good customer service experience,” Schwelm said. “They deal with a variety of people, faculty members and mainly students and staff members too. They learn how to run the library management system, the circulation, so that’s good computer skills, and then sometimes we have them create spreadsheets for different reports.”

“They’re integral to running a smooth operation here,” Schwelm said. “We really rely on our students to take care of the front of the house while we librarians help the students with their research work and while we also teach our ECG class, the one credit research component of the ECG 100 classes.”

Gingerich agrees that, as Schwelm said, many of these work-study jobs are very important, not only for the departments for which they are working, but also for the student’s own funding.

“I know that there are students that really count on that funding,” Gingerich said. “They get their bi-weekly paycheck and that’s their spending money, their food money, there are students who use that paycheck and come in and make payments on their tuition bill. So I predict it would really hurt our students [to lose funding].”

While Trump’s current budget proposal is simply a proposal at this point, the school must already be thinking ahead to this funding cut as a possibility.

“I would think that the university would think that federal work study is important enough that they would decide to continue to fund jobs on campus for students,” Gingerich said. “The university will feel it because we’ll have to come up with the funding and it might even be reallocating from someplace else depending on how the budget is built.”

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Cecelia Heckman

Junior Editor-in-Chief/ Executive Content Manager of Loquitur. Digital Communications and Social Media major with a Business Administration minor. Student ambassador, Assistant Operations Manager of WYBF and show co-host, President of Alpha Lambda Delta, member of the Society for Collegiate Journalists and member of the Cabrini Honor's Program.

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