Federal Work-Study (FWS) is not just a form of financial aid—it is also a campus-based employment program. Unlike most federal student aid, which is awarded to students based on a formula, FWS funds are allocated to institutions. The allocation structure gives institutions substantial flexibility regarding who receives an award, award amounts, and how students are connected to jobs. Helping students translate an FWS award into a paid job requires institutions to manage an employment system spanning eligibility verification, job placement, hiring and onboarding, supervision, timekeeping, payroll, and federal compliance. Yet the administrative resources required to manage and operate FWS—and how they vary across institutions—have not previously been documented.
This brief addresses this gap by examining the administrative resources required for FWS at a selection of CUNY colleges. The authors describe the FWS program’s core operational components and, using the ingredients method, present a detailed cost analysis of the staff time, technology, and other campus resources required to administer the program. The authors estimate that the annual administrative cost of FWS was $955 per student worker in 2021-22, a pandemic-era year when participation was substantially below pre-pandemic levels, compared with about $570 when the same estimated total costs are spread across 2017-18 participation levels. Across campuses, annual per-student costs ranged from $529 to $1,703 in 2021-22 and from $156 to $1,152 under the pre-pandemic scale test—variation that reflects campus differences and the sensitivity of per-student costs to program scale due to significant fixed costs.
Personnel accounts for 91% of total costs, driven largely by FWS coordinators, who dedicate much of their time (about 25 hours/week, on average) moving students through the paperwork-to-placement pipeline and whose time allocation also varies with program scale. Technology adoption also serves as a primary source of institutional cost variation, as campuses with lower student enrollment frequently use manual workflows instead of relying on software, effectively shifting their expenses from material costs to staff time for data entry and error checking.
The study provides a useful benchmark for interpreting how program scale, staffing, and technology shape campus costs. Variation in administrative cost is not simply a matter of institutional efficiency. Some of the variation reflects real differences in how campuses staff and operate the program, while some reflects differences in scale and the extent to which fixed costs can be spread across participants. More broadly, the findings suggest that student employment programs require meaningful administrative capacity, but that institutions may be able to operate them more efficiently by coordinating participation targets, staffing, and technology and taking advantage of economies of scale.