Majority of Americas Best Colleges Fail at Community Service

A new study by the Center for Higher Education Support Services, Inc. shows America's best colleges remain among the worst for community service. The study updates the work of two graduate students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism published in 2002.

Wilmington, NC (PRWEB) Aug. 9, 2003 -- A new study by the Center for Higher Education Support Services, Inc. shows Americas best colleges remain among the worst for community service.

While most colleges and universities spend 14.5 percent of their allocated Work-Study funds for community service activities, schools such as the University of California Berkeley, University of Notre Dame, Bowdoin College, and Davidson College spend less than 7 percent. The majority of US News ranked top 20 schools fall below the national average for performing Work-Study service. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Duke, Dartmouth and others all fell below the national average.

Congress established the Federal Work-Study program in 1964 to help financially needy students pay for college by working while attending school. The program requires schools to spend at least seven percent of allocated funds on community service yet 447 schools (13.6 percent) failed to do so during the most recent award year for which data is available. This number is up significantly from the 174 schools (5.2 percent) that failed to spend the 5 percent required in 1999-00 despite the Bush administration's hope to improve compliance.

Congress is currently holding hearings to reauthorize the law which expires in September. President Bush has suggested the spending requirement be increased from 7 to 50 percent. Legislators have proposed an increase to 25 percent. Most higher education groups including the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators do not support an increase in the community service spending requirement. In fact, some college officials have threatened to pull out of the FWS program if the spending requirement is increased. Over 700 schools have already left the program since 1990.

The program also requires schools to employ at least one student as a reading tutor for children or in family literacy activities, yet 443 schools (13.5 percent) failed to do so.

The study updates and expands a previous study by Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism. That study was widely cited by the Washington Monthly (see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0201.green.html ), the Washington Post, Newsweek, and others.

CHESS President Mark Williams, who authored the report, hopes Congress will consider the results of this study during reauthorization. He says the results show that mandates are necessary to achieve results." "Less than 1 percent of funding is spent on the voluntary mathematics tutoring program while 5 percent is spent on the mandatory reading tutoring program" he said.

The study also provides details of how 3,291 colleges and universities administer over $1 billion in FWS funds. It lists the schools that use the funds most effectively and those that had the most unused funds, like Duke University which returned almost $2 million over the past three years in unused funds ($871,000 in 2001-02).

Work-Study funds are allocated to schools in all 50 states and nine U.S. territories. The report ranks schools and states by allocated funds and use for community service, among other rankings, and is available from Lulu Press at http://www.lulu.com/chessconsulting.

The Center for Higher Education Support Services, Inc. (CHESS, Inc.) provides high-quality financial aid management consulting services to colleges, universities, and student financial aid industry participants.

CHESS's areas of expertise include financial aid management, policy, law, systems, training and support, and people services. For additional information, visit www.chessconsulting.org. For more information on the studys author, visit http://www.chessconsulting.org/about/bio-mwilliams.htm.

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Photography Attached: Reproduction permission granted for all photo attachments.

1) book cover, full color

2) Adobe Acrobat Preview File (index lists schools mentioned in the report)

3) Photos of Student Workers on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, full color

4) Photo of the Director of Financial Aid at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (ranked 3 times in the report).