Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 35

Republican Senator Pat Toomey that would allow students to
use work study to take full-time jobs for short periods.
The Department of Education appears receptive, too. Earlier this year it announced an experiment, slated to start in the
fall, that will provide extra money to select schools to facilitate
off-campus work experiences for work study students. Those
students can take full-time internships, and the government
will pay the same share of student wages whether they work
at for-profit companies, nonprofits, or on-campus employers.
If the department finds that participation boosts students'
chances of getting a job after graduating, those changes could be
implemented on a national scale.
But to do that, and to make sure work study reaches the students who could benefit most from it, Congress will have to give
the program more money. Alarmingly, the Trump administration has recommended cutting work study's budget by more than
half, despite its own Education Department's declared interest in using the program to connect students with high-quality
work experiences. Recent proposals from congressional Democrats and Republicans have called for increasing the work study
budget. But even Democratic proposals, which would more than
double program spending by 2023, come up short. Reaching every Pell Grant student, to use a rough benchmark, would require
increasing the current budget more than ninefold-and that's
before adding in extra money for schools to set up programs with
off-campus employers, or raising the amount that students are
paid. But work study is so small now-last year's budget was just
over $1 billion-that even with an increase of that order, it would
still be trivial relative to overall higher education spending.
The fact that, Trump budget requests aside, there is broad
consensus that work study needs more funding gives reason for
hope. Unlike so many questions in contemporary politics, what
to do about work study is not deeply polarizing. But what work
study is may be even worse: part of a larger, complex bill that
Congress has failed to act on for years. Its best chance for improvement comes through the reauthorization of the Higher
Education Act, the sprawling higher ed omnibus bill that governs everything from school accreditation to student loans. It's
typically updated every four to six years, but has languished
since 2008, yet another victim of congressional dysfunction.
Lamar Alexander, leading the charge to reauthorize the
HEA as the chair of the Senate's education committee, promised in a February New York Times op-ed to fix student aid
within the next six months. But even if he and his colleagues
make good on that pledge, the resulting law is likely to just nibble around the edges. At a time when students are graduating
with enormous debt burdens-if they're graduating at all-
and struggling to make the leap to a good career, Congress has
confined its thinking to incrementalism. It should recognize
work study for the secret weapon that it is: a politically popular
program that could make a major dent in the triple crisis of affordability, graduation rates, and the job pipeline. All it needs is
some more ambition.
Grace Gedye is associate editor at the Washington Monthly.

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Washington Monthly - September/October 2019

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