They held out hope that Friday’s cuts in the federally funded work-study program would never be enacted. Now that it has come to pass, financial aid officers at colleges and universities across the country are bracing for the fallout when some 33,000 students lose their campus jobs.
The severity of those cuts is being called “devastating” at some historically Black colleges, who serve needy students already scrambling to pay for tuition. Conversely, at larger traditionally White institutions, the impact won’t be as daunting because those universities have larger coffers and other student employment programs, financial aid officers say.
Nationally, the impact of the cuts varies from state to state. According to the U.S. Department of Education, about $1.2 billion was granted to students on 713,000 campuses during fiscal year 2010-11. “Federal work-study would be cut by $49 million, eliminating 33,000 students from participation,’’ federal officials say.
According to statistics released by the White House, students attending college in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico would be affected by what President Barack Obama called “self-inflicted wounds” created by the Republicans’ “cut-only approach” to trim the federal deficit. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has countered that the cuts are necessary to curb “out of control spending.”
Students in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Puerto Rico would be hurt the most with 1,000 or more students in each state losing work-study grants, the White House report says.
Some financial aid officers at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and Texas Southern University, both historically Black universities, expressed their discontent with the sequestration process late last week. But officials from New York University and the University of California say they will develop plans to absorb the cuts to lessen the impact.
“Our students will be severely impacted,” says Michelle Burwell, the director of financial aid operations at Cheyney.
