MEDILL NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT
Missouri-Western Tops Missouri Colleges in Community Service Work-Study Spending
By SCOTT LAUCK
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON - Bob Berger, director of financial aid for Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph, knew his school had been successful in helping students afford college by paying them to work in the community. But he was surprised to learn how successful. Missouri Western has dedicated a larger percentage of its federal work study dollars to community service than any other four-year public school in the state.

"I'll be doggoned," Mr. Berger said. "I assumed every school was as committed to it as we were."

While Missouri schools as a whole met the federal requirement that they spend at least 5 percent of their federal work-study money on community service in the 1999-2000 year - the most recent year for which data had been compiled - individual schools varied wildly in meeting that commitment. The best-performing school was Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, where 56.6 percent of work-study money went to community service. The worst-performing was Central Missouri State University, which reported 1.2 percent compliance. The state average was 9.7 percent compared with a national average of nearly 12 percent.

Missouri Western spent 37.4 percent of its work-study money on community service, the fourth-best rating in the state and the best rating of the major state schools. Mr. Berger said the school's success was largely due to paying work-study students to participate in literacy and tutoring programs in local schools, which not only get students into the community but also give experience to education and social work majors. "It's just kind of a natural tie," he said.

Mr. Berger also cited his personal philosophy that it was better for students to earn money to offset college costs than go into debt. "We're a school that believes in work-study, and we are in a part of the country that still believes in work," he said. "The kids, given the choice, will work."

Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville was about at the national average, with 11.6 percent of its work-study pay going to community-service jobs. Del Morley, the school's financial aid director, said it has looked aggressively for ways to meet the requirement. While he said students are often interested in community service to gain experience, many simply need a paycheck.

"When you bring 6,000 students into a community of 12,000 there are limited job opportunities," he said.

Such is not always the case. At Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, students are lured to nearby Kansas City or Sedalia to work at private companies, according to financial aid director Phil Shreves. Central has the lowest reported percentage of work-study devoted to community service in the state. Mr. Shreves disputed the Department of Education's figure of 1.2 percent, but admitted that Central did not meet the federal requirement of 5 percent. He said the school was considering raising the community service wage so it could compete with private jobs.

"It's difficult to get students interested in off-campus work-study," Mr. Shreves said. "They'd rather work at Wal-Mart, where they could get more money, plus 15 percent off what they buy."

While the federal requirement is based on the percentage of work-study money spent on community service, the percentage is not necessarily an accurate picture of the school's involvement in the community. At Central Christian College, the school with the highest percentage, only 11 students did community service, earning about $10,500 in federal dollars. By contrast, Washington University in St. Louis, whose percentage was only slightly above the 9.7 percent state average, had 270 students involved in work-study - the highest in the state - and spent more than $170,000.

Mary Ann Beahon, a spokeswoman for William Woods University in Fulton, said her school's 9 percent compliance rate wasn't necessarily good for the school because students who could be helping the university were working somewhere else. She noted a time when a student she had hoped would work in her office was placed instead as a tutor at a local school.

"It was bad for me, but good for the (local) schools," Mrs. Beahon said.

Graphics
Graphic of Best/Worst Schools

Graphic of Top 20 U.S. Schools and Their work-study percentage spent on community service

Graphic of Best States

CLICK HERE