The U.S. Department of Education’s Experimental Sites Initiative will allow employers to have an opportunity to hire students, Felder said.
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Clark State will be able to use federal work-study funds to support more students working in the private sector and, for the first time, allow them to pay low-income students for work experiences required by their academic programs.
“This means that we can explore using federal work-study to provide paid experiential learning opportunities for students,” said Taylor Roberts, grants development coordinator for Clark State. “Many Clark State students are not in a financial position to decrease their hours at their job to participate in experiential learning. This will make the choice much easier.”
The work currently available for students is often on-campus work and the work-study limits the amount of funds a college can spend on external experiences to 25%, including spending 7% on community service jobs and having at least one reading tutor job.
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“This experiment seeks to waive these requirements, opening up the possibility for the majority of funding to be spent on for-profit, external jobs, and increase the number of hours and/or hourly wage a student can receive through federal work-study,” Roberts said.
This program will “help assess whether students are better served when they are paid for work-based learning and allowed access to off-campus federal work-study jobs that align with their program, as measured by student retention, completion and improved job opportunities after graduation,” the release said.
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