Balancing part-time work and studies has become commonplace for university students in Canada and other countries where the costs of education have risen over time. While there is a substantial literature on the impacts of term-time work on studies, little has been written about campus employment programs, which are becoming more commonplace in…

Students who have dropped out of high school--and those at risk of doing so--are at greater risk of lifelong poverty, involvement with the criminal justice system, dependence on government welfare programs, and even premature death. In the last few years, however, the problems at high schools have compounded, as pandemic-era school closures led to…

While Pell-grants and other financial aid offers the payment of college, students of low-income have little to no assistance for cost-of-living expenses. Frequently, students go without supplies, technology, and internet connections; they even live without the security of food and shelter. Students of low-income face barriers that leave them…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate students' perception of growth in the area of work-related skills through their participation in an integrated work study program (IWSP). In Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), 368 students across a range of six programs took part in an IWSP lasting six to twelve months. Students reported…

The federal work-study program is one of the earliest forms of federal financial aid for higher education in the United States and has come under close scrutiny for its debatable impact on low-income students' college success and persistence. However, federal work-study surprisingly remains one of the least-studied financial aid programs. This has…

Institutional researchers are often tasked with assessing why college-wide initiatives succeed or fail. This can be a difficult task: researchers need to discriminate between multiple feasible explanations, work with limited data, and produce compelling narratives. Process tracing is a qualitative methodology that enables researchers to make valid…

College-based transition services provide opportunities for transition-age students with intellectual disability and autism (ID/A) between the ages of 18 and 22 to receive their final years of secondary transition services in a college or university setting. We compared the extent to which youth with ID/A experience in-school predictors of…

Background: Prior studies suggest that Federal Work-Study (FWS) participation is positively associated with student learning, persistence, and academic achievement at four-year institutions. Limited research, however, has evaluated whether FWS participation improves academic success among students attending community colleges. Purpose and Research…

Institutions of higher education invest time and money directing cocurricular programs that allow students to formally engage in the local community. Community-service learning is one type of program recently dubbed "high impact" (Kuh, 2008). However, it is not enough to simply refer to a program as "high impact": it is…

Policymakers may be interested in the extent to which Federal Work-Study programs (FWS) increase students' access to productive employment, and how they impact students' academic and career success. This brief summarizes findings from a recent study using national data and a propensity score matching approach to examine the overall effects of FWS…

This review explores the expanding role of federal aid policy considered from a contemporary and social justice perspective. It highlights recent trends in aid policy as well as difficulties that arise from the current system. Next, the review takes up an analysis of current aid policy that carefully considers equity and efficiency as primary…

Student engagement in institutions of higher education has become a central priority for educators and administrators. What "student engagement" means for a diverse student body is an important question for public institutions with justice-related missions. As social welfare policy shifts to allow more recipients of public assistance…

The Federal Work-Study program was introduced as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, with the goal of enabling low-income students to work their way through college. It is thus one of the earliest forms of federal financial aid for college, pre-dating both Pell Grants and Stafford Loans. Since its inception, FWS has provided institutions…

The Federal Work-Study (FWS) program is one of the oldest federal programs intended to promote college access and persistence for low-income students. Since 1964, the program has provided approximately $1 billion annually to cover up to 75 percent of the wages of student employees, who typically work on campus for 10 to 15 hours per week. The FWS…

Due to rising costs and declining affordability, many students have to work while attending college. The federal government takes a major role in subsidizing the wages of college students and spent over $1 billion on the Work-Study program in 2010-11 (College Board, 2011), yet little is known about how working during the school year impacts…