The Causal Effects of Federal Work-Study Offers on College Enrollment and Program Participation

Federal Work-Study (FWS) is a distinctive type of financial aid, originally intended to both reduce financial constraints and improve access to career-relevant job opportunities. Prior research on FWS has primarily focused on post-enrollment, post-program-participation outcomes, leaving potential upstream margins of impact unexplored. Using a unique administrative data source tracking FWS offers, enrollment, and participation from the date of financial aid application, we study the causal impacts of receiving an FWS offer at a large public college system including both two- and four-year campuses. We use a difference-in-differences approach comparing FWS-eligible aid applicants to similar ineligible applicants, who apply before and after an arbitrary date after which FWS availability is limited. Though we find no effects of FWS offers on enrollment or for the full sample, we do find substantial and statistically significant increases in enrollment for community college students and independent students. We find that receiving an FWS offer before the start of the school year increases FWS participation by 27 percentage points – a substantial and statistically significant effect, but far from complete take-up. The offer-induced increase in FWS job holding is also heterogenous across subgroups. Our results provide new insights on which student populations may be most sensitive to an FWS offer, and demonstrate that enrollment impacts can occur even in the context of overall low program take-up.