The New School’s Federal Work Study program (FWS) will stop paying students at the end of the 2024-25 academic year due to reaching its budget limit. In recent years, the school has continued FWS into the summer to fully utilize its budget but is unable to this year. It also won’t issue new awards or pay increases for the remainder of the semester.

As of publication, the FWS program had used most of its budget for this year, according to Keith Yee, the associate director of financial aid at TNS. The budget is given to the school every year by the federal government to support students who qualify for FWS.

The budget for the 2024-25 school year was a little over $1 million, according to Sarah Fevig,  assistant vice provost for financial aid and scholarships at The New School. 

“The objective is to use the full amount of money every year,” Fevig said. She also stated that organizations can be penalized if they don’t use all of their FWS budget. “Traditionally, it ends right when classes are over, but if we’re underutilized, we can extend that if the student is eligible.”

Some of the FWS jobs at The New School include library positions, research assistants, and tutoring. “Work-Study can play a big role in helping students stay in school because it provides financial support, creates structured work experiences and it helps students feel more connected to campus,” Yee said.

Bo Becker, a second-year literary studies major at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts who works at the front desk of the Performing Arts Library, said she heard about FWS meeting their budget in an email from Financial Aid.

Last year, FWS was available through June, “so that students could work over the summer if they wanted to,” Becker said. “This year they told us that they were cutting it off on May 14, the final day of the semester, due to budget reasons.”

To fully utilize the budget in the past, Financial Aid has increased student awards for FWS and extended the dates students could work for the program. However, this year, 73 more students accepted FWS offers than last year bringing the amount of students to 431 — an increase of 20% from last year. 

Fevig attributed the growth in FWS to increased outreach efforts from the school to raise awareness about work-study offers. Shesaid the office has sent monthly reminders to students who had not yet found a work-study job and offered generous deadlines for students to secure positions.

Becker said she knew of one coworker who had already reached the maximum number of hours allowed under Federal Work Study. Their boss was scheduling them anyway, “and that means that the school is paying her, and not the grant money,” she said. 

Despite Fevig’s buoyancy, on March 10, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) sent The New School a letter saying they will take “potential enforcement actions” if TNS does not address allegations regarding antisemitism and discrimination on campus. These actions could involve the freezing of federal grants at TNS.

A similar situation occurred at Columbia and other colleges, such as Cornell and Northwestern, when Trump froze their federal funding due to allegations of antisemitism and accusations of racial discrimination stemming from their efforts to promote diversity on campuses. On Friday, March 21, Columbia agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in an effort to restore access to these federal grants.

Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education may cause complications with FWS. According to Elin Johnson, a reporter who covers higher education, “the funds for those grants wouldn’t go away with an executive order, [but] there is a potential for students to see disruptions if the grants were to be managed by another department or by a smaller ED staff.”

CTE Policy Watch, a blog about education policy change backed by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), reported that the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the budget for the U.S Department of Education released their Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations bill. The bill proposes a 50% cut to the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and Federal Work Study Programs, which could potentially impact thousands of low-income students receiving federal assistance.

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) has created a Student Financial Aid Toolkit, which features templates for students to write to local elected officials about the importance of federal financial aid. 

Despite changes and uncertainty within the Department of Education, Fevig still remains optimistic about the future of the FWS program at TNS. “This program has been in place for 61 years. It has lasted through many, many administrations,” Fevig said. “I personally believe the value of it [FWS] is clearly documented and known to Congress.”