Colorado State University-Pueblo administrators cut work-study funds by 20 percent for the 2016-17 school year. It is no secret that $600 is a lot to a college student. It could be one month’s rent or a new laptop.

CSU-Pueblo employs approximately 650 students every year at various campus jobs. Usually, each student who qualifies for work-study is allotted $3,000 a year – $1,500 per semester – to earn as a work-study award.

A review of the past year’s work-study trends found that much of allocated work-study funds weren’t being spent. Due to this, Director of Financial Aid Justin Streater, Assistant Director of Financial Aid Greg Thorsten, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Chrissy Holliday and a financial aid consultant found it necessary to drop many students’ work-study award allowance to $2,400 a year, $1,200 a semester.

“It’s a kind of a ‘use it or you lose it’ situation when it comes to campus-based federal funds like work study. So to avoid this and provide more opportunity we decided to go with a small decrease for the year,” Streater explained.

The average work-study earnings out of the original $3,000 for the year ranged from $1,700 to $2,200 with a few exceptions, meaning students were not earning the full advantage of their given awards and only received 56 percent to 73 percent total of what they could have.

“We were trying to make more opportunity for students to get jobs on campus and that way we would free up more money for more positions for more students. Typically, in the past we haven’t used all of our federal or state work-study and this way we thought if we could create more positions then more students could work, and we could use it all,” Streater said.

Mathematics major Ariel Payne, a junior at CSU-Pueblo, is one of many who received the 20 percent cut in the work-study award this year. She has held the campus work-study position at the CSU-Pueblo Bookstore as a cashier for over a year now. “My work-study was cut by $300 a semester. It makes things difficult since my work-study is my only source of income. Since it’s been cut either my monthly paychecks will be smaller, or I’ll run out of hours,” Payne said.

The cuts across the board did vary, some students still received the full $3,000 for the year and some the $2,400, and some who already have jobs on campus that are not work-study positions, like resident assistants (RA’s) received even less.

“We’ve tried to grandfather everybody who had $3,000 into the next year, but just some of them with timing, with technical issues, they didn’t all come across, but anybody who has come in and is like ‘hey I had $3000 last year’ we’ve increased those back to $3,000,” Payne said.

As far as the Resident Assistants who qualify for work-study, each student is allowed only a certain budget and factoring in their lack of paying for room and board, their budget can end up much smaller for work-study than other students.’ However, financial aid is still trying to make their work-study situation better as well.

“I wish we would do that a little differently. I’m trying to get housing to give them a scholarship as opposed to us just removing it from their budget so that way it’s on the books too better,” Streater said.

An increase of work-study funds for next semester is not likely to happen, but might for the school year 2017-2018. A reevaluation of work-study will be done at the end of the year, and there are a chance funds will be increased back to the standard award level of $3,000 per qualifying student per year.

“We look at how many accepted it, how many worked and then the average work award. So what they actually earned for the full year. That’s kind of what we did before we reduced to the $2,400,” Streater added.

For now, students who have a lower work-study award, and it is their only source of income, the financial aid department does have resources for them including the SALT, financial literacy and budgeting program free to students and some available grants and scholarships that can be applied if they talk to a financial aid counselor.

Streater hopes to improve financial literacy among students on campus as well as improve the communication between the financial aid department and students, so they know about the resources and opportunities available to them.

“I always try to tell students to come in and ask or shoot me an email because I’m always happy to help, Streater said.

“I was a student for a very long time, and I’ve been in financial aid for over 10 years and I know how it is so I’m always trying help students as much as possible.”

The financial aid office is located in the administration building. No appointment is necessary to meet with a financial aid counselor.