The $200 million allocated to the Federal Work-Study Program as part of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan could generate more opportunities for student employment, said Ronald Johnson, UCLA director of financial aid.
“Currently, about 3,000 students are on the work-study program at UCLA. With more money, we would be able to provide assistance to an even larger number of students,” Johnson said.
He added that UCLA has an advantage in the allocation of additional funding because of the large number of Pell Grant recipients at the school, which is one of the factors that will be considered when allocating the money.
“We have 9,047 Pell Grant recipients, and many other institutions don’t have such a large population of recipients. Hopefully the government will take that into account when distributing funds,” he said.
The government will determine which work-study programs will receive money from the stimulus plan by analyzing applications submitted yearly by universities, he said.
He added that he felt confident that the government would distribute the additional funds from the stimulus plan based on the university’s need displayed in these applications.
However, the additional funding that will be available to the work-study program as part of the economic stimulus package will only be available for the next two academic years, unless more permanent changes are made for the following years.
“Although the stimulus plan is a good plan and it will help to put resources where they are needed, when they are needed, we are hoping that the government will increase the money for work-study on a regular basis after 2010-2011,” Johnson said.
At this point it is not known how the stimulus package will directly affect work-study funding at UCLA, said Claudia Luther, a UCLA media relations representative.
Currently, UCLA receives about $3.3 million for the work-study program and anticipates that it will receive about that amount for 2009-2010, Luther said.
But Chris Harrington, a University of California spokesman, said that it is likely that members of the work-study program university-wide will benefit from the increase in funds because they receive money as part of the federal work-study program.
“We are continuing to work with colleagues at the Department of Education and other groups at the federal level in order to find information and ways that we can get additional funds,” Harrington said.