Work Study Changes

The employment office’s successful efforts to increase the wages of work study positions and to better connect students to those positions created a ‘perfect storm.’

On Jan. 15, Christopher Natelborg, the director of Financial Aid at MHCC, informed students participating in Federal Work Study positions that maximum dollar awards for Winter and Spring terms would be reduced, from $2,400 to $1,500 per term.

According to Natelborg, the college had so successfully increased student participation in the program that it spent almost half of the college’s federally funded Work Study allocation for the entire academic year during the 2024 Fall Term alone.

In a follow-up email to Work Study supervisors, Natelborg said that in previous years the college has found it challenging to spend the amount it was allocated for Work Study because there was less student interest and fewer positions available for them to accept. It followed that the amount of pass-through funding awarded to Mt. Hood had remained static for a number of years: “As far as I know, the annual allotment we have has been the same for over a decade,” he said.

Now, Natelborg says that the Student Employment office’s successful efforts to increase the wages of Work Study positions (to improve competition with off-campus employers) and to better connect students to those positions (through the Handshake job search platform) created “a ‘perfect storm’ wherein we successfully increased student engagement and usage (of FWS funds) but it happened much faster than we had anticipated.”

Graphic by Cortlan Souders

The college, namely through its Work Study supervisors, has a great deal of discretion over how many hours and at what rates students are employed. The hourly pay of work study positions varies but all must meet, at least, the regional minimum hourly wage required by Oregon within the Portland metro area (currently $15.95).

Natelborg said the college will take efforts to better monitor the funds in the future and might move to create more individualized student awards to help prevent a repeat of the current situation.

Going forward, he said he wants to keep the previous maximum per-term dollar award amount in place.

“We do hope to keep the maximum award close to $2,400 because we have heard from students that it is more helpful to have that higher earning potential,” he said.

Natelborg will co-host a briefing for MHCC staff/supervisors on Feb. 19 to update them on how Mt. Hood is handling the Work Study changes.