For University of Massachusetts freshman Tiffany Hartford, searching for the ideal work-study position is an ongoing project this semester.

Hartford was reticent about getting a job last semester even though she knew she had a work-study award.

Student work-study is a federally-subsidized program that provides students with money for part-time employment while they are enrolled at any of the 3,400 colleges or universities that participate in the program nationally.

‘ ‘I wanted to get a feel for my class schedule first and for the campus,’ said Hartford. She also said she didn’t want to get too overwhelmed. ‘

Yet by winter break’s end, Hartford had changed her mind. Early this semester, she began sending out everything she needed to apply for work-study, including ‘references, a cover letter, a resume,’ said Hartford.‘

Hartford had her hopes set on becoming an administrative assistant, because she had heard that administrative assistant positions offer flexible schedules. She interviewed for an open position at the Center for Student Business, but she didn’t get it.

So she applied at the economics department, hoping to pick up weekly shifts as an office assistant. And when that didn’t work out, she even turned up for the Residence Hall Security hiring session, hoping to get hired as a security monitor.

But all searches turned up empty, and she has yet to find a job on campus.

Hartford said potential employers were put off from hiring her for different reasons including her ‘weird schedule,’ as a teaching assistant. Also, because Hartford is not an upperclassman, it was implied to her by her potential employer that she had not progressed far enough in her education. Also, Hartford was told that she wasn’t ‘skilled enough in languages and database entry.’

But Hartford‘s inability to find a job on campus is indicative of something else. As more students compete for campus employment, many students have found work-study positions and other employment opportunities are shrinking. Students granted federal work-study awards have been forced to refrain from using their work-study awards altogether because of the competition and lack of availability of positions.

Work-study jobs can range from office work in campus academic departments to community service work off-campus with private, nonprofit organizations such as America Reads/America Counts.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, an estimated 793,000 students received work-study awards in 2008 ‘- a 15-percent increase from the number of work-study recipients in 2006.

This increase in the number of work-study recipients, which may be attributed to the effects of the economic recession, has been felt on UMass’ campus.

In a recent e-mail interview, UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski noted that approximately 5,143 students received federal work-study in the 2008-2009 award year, including undergraduates, graduates and summer-term students.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, employers are expected to pay only 25 percent of a work-study student’s salary, while the rest is covered by the work-study award. Therefore, as a work-study student, 75 percent of Hartford‘s salary has already been paid for by the federal government. ‘

Yet, as more students compete for the same number of campus jobs, students like Hartford, unprepared for such competitiveness, may be hard-pressed to find employment even with work-study awards.

Eligibility for federal work-study is based on a student’s expected family contribution (EFC), which is calculated through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The award is then included in a student’s financial aid package for the upcoming academic year.

While eligibility for work-study is determined by a student’s EFC, requests for the awards are made specifically by universities or colleges.

"quoted2">‘Because there is a set funding amount for the campus, [federal work-study] is awarded to higher-need students at or below certain EFC levels,’ said Blaguszewski.

Other factors, such as a student’s residency, career or dependency, can help determine a university’s view of a students’ EFC levels.‘

The average work-study award for returning in-state students was about $1,700 during fiscal 2008, according to the UMass Office of Institutional Research. The average award for first-year students was $1,500, which is less than the $1,800 work-study award Hartford received for the year.

Although work-study money is set aside for a student, a student doesn’t have access to it unless they have a job that approves work-study. Students are paid at an hourly rate for the work that they do, but are also free to use their time at work to study or do class work. At UMass, which operates on a bi-weekly paycheck cycle, students earn a paycheck that they are able to use at their own discretion.

Aside from giving a student some much-needed spending money throughout the semester, a work-study job also carries other perks.

According to a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the money a student earns at a federal work-study job has no impact on a student’s EFC for the following year. This wouldn’t be the case if a student were to work at a job that doesn’t accept work-study, because any income a student made could decrease the financial aid he or she receives in future semesters.

In the year to date, Blaguszewski claimed that 2,067 students have earned all or part of their federal work study awards while an estimated 40 percent of students have yet to use their work-study awards.

‘Financial Aid awards a large number of students, knowing not all of them will use the award,’ said Blaguszewski. ‘This is an effort to help employ as many students as possible and to use the entire federal allocation for the year.’

Across UMass, top student employers have found that confusion about work-study awards can be common and can contribute to a student not using their award.‘

‘There are students who say they don’t have [a work-study award], and then later on we’ll find out that they do,’ said Kevin Wissmann, assistant manager of human resources and organizational development at UMass Auxiliary Services. ‘We assume they may be using [the award] somewhere else, or that they just don’t know they have it.’

Auxiliary Services includes Dining Services, as well as facilities that run within the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center, such as the Blue Wall and the University Store.

According to Wissmann, Auxiliary Services employs about 1,400 students, making it one of the largest employers of students on campus.

When students apply to work in Auxiliary Services, they’re asked if they have a work-study award that they’d like to have put toward their salary. Of the students they employ, about 10 percent, or approximately 143 students, use federal work-study.

Wissmann estimated that there are as many as 100 additional students working in Auxiliary Services who have work-study awards, even though they’ve claimed they do not.

If unused, a work-study award can be converted to a Federal Direct Loan, said Blaguszewski. An unused award cannot be carried over to another school year or applied to existing grants or scholarships, which means that any money a student fails to use during the year simply goes to waste.

Wissmann worries that reaching out exclusively to work-study students is a risk.

‘There’s just not enough demand,’ said Wissmann of work-study jobs in Auxiliary Services. Although he recently considered making hiring exclusive to work-study students because it would be cheaper, he ultimately ruled it out, deeming that it would be too difficult and unrealistic to expect 1,400 student positions to be filled with only work-study students.

This past February, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Appropriations Act, which included a $200 million increase in funding for the federal work-study program. The act, which was approved by the Senate on March 10, also increases funding for the Pell Grant, which provides need-based grants to low-income students.

While additional funding could increase student financial award amounts, and potentially make financial awards more available to other students, additional funding does little to address the problem UMass’ work-study population has finding jobs on campus.

Mia Santos, a junior transfer student from Holyoke Community College, wasn’t short on award money at the beginning of the semester when she began searching for a campus job.

Unlike Tiffany Hartford, Santos had been in the work-study program before. Back when she attended HCC, she earned work-study as a tutor.

‘The [tutoring] job helped alleviate confusion [about work-study]. I knew that I’d be getting a check,’ said Santos.

But like Hartford, Santos found that work-study jobs were in short supply on UMass’ campus. Santos applied to several academic departments, but she wasn’t hired for any position. She also applied for positions at retail stores like Big Y and CVS, but her off-campus searches proved unsuccessful.

‘The [student employment] website definitely needs to be updated more,’ Santos said after securing a position as an intramural sports referee.

The student employment website available through Financial Aid Services runs ads for vacant job positions throughout the year. The website is the most common way students find out information about campus jobs. The listings are divided between work-study and non-work-study students, with the bulk of the listings geared towards students with work-study.‘ ‘

Santos sent out multiple e-mails to employers that were advertising on the website, only to discover that many of the positions had been filled by the time she contacted them despite the listings remaining ‘vacant’ online. And while some employers let Santos know that the positions she was interested in had already been filled, others didn’t. Some didn’t even bother to return her e-mails.

‘I applied, and he never replied,’ said Santos of one potential employer. Not knowing whether the position would be available made it difficult to determine whether or not to keep searching elsewhere.

‘I get bothered when they don’t e-mail back,’ said Hartford, who also encountered her share of employers who never replied to her e-mails.

‘They could at least say no,’ said Hartford.‘

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Shayna Murphy can be reached at skmurphy@student.umass.edu.‘

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