EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- Education Department leaders say the Federal Work-Study program is intended to provide students with job opportunities for gaining real-world experience, not political activism.
- The Trump administration ended the Biden-era directive that had allowed get-out-the-vote jobs, citing legal concerns raised by Republican attorneys general.
- The College Fix uncovered evidence of partisan connections in student work-study jobs at several universities, including an 'anti-racism' position advertised through Penn State.
The Trump administration just put an end to a Biden-era directive allowing taxpayer-funded work-study jobs to include get-out-the-vote positions after The College Fix found that some were linked to Democrat election efforts.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it is doing away with the Biden administration’s 2024 guidance regarding the Federal Work-Study program. The program offers part-time jobs to college students with financial needs.
“Federal Work Study is meant to provide students opportunities to gain real-world experience that prepares them to succeed in the workforce, not as a way to fund political activism on our college and university campuses,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent stated in a news release.
The department cited legal concerns raised by 16 Republican attorneys general who argued the Biden administration’s guidance violated federal law.
While the jobs were supposed to be non-partisan, the attorneys general predicted in an April 2024 letter that the change would lead to partisan vote harvesting for Democrats.
The College Fix later found evidence of this at Penn State University, the University of Washington, and Pacific University in Oregon.
Last fall, Penn State advertised a student work-study job with the leftist group League of Women Voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The ad for the “civic engagement ambassadors” job listed a number of desired skill sets, including “equity and inclusion” and engagement in “anti-racism practices.”
Penn State removed the job ad after The Fix reported about it, but did not respond to questions about why.
Last fall, the University of Washington also advertised a voter engagement work-study job with the leftist organization El Centro de la Raza. Translated as the Center for People of All Races, the Seattle group describes its work as “social justice,” The Fix reported.
The jobs – and another linked to leftist election advocacy at Pacific University – attracted criticism from top Republican leaders last fall, including U.S. Reps. Virginia Foxx and Burgess Owens.
Foxx’s spokesperson AnnMarie Graham-Barnes told The Fix at the time that the Penn State job was “another attempt by the Biden-Harris administration to federalize elections and use taxpayer funds to advance the Democrats’ agenda.”
Speaking this week about the change, Trump’s Education Department under secretary said the Republican administration wants to ensure that American taxpayers “will no longer fund poll workers, voter hotlines, or political rallies on campus” through the student aid program.
Additionally, the department’s new guidance this week informs colleges and universities that the Higher Education Act “does not require institutions to distribute voter registration forms to students known to be ineligible to vote.”
The law requires higher education institutions to make a “good faith” effort to distribute voter registration forms to students.
However, “to ensure that they are not aiding and abetting voter fraud, the Department has clarified that it does not interpret this ‘good faith’ provision in the HEA to mean that institutions are required to distribute voter registration information to students who the institution has reason to believe are ineligible to vote in federal or state elections, such as foreign students,” according to a news release.
Last fall, a University of Michigan student was charged with voting illegally at a campus polling place; he is not a U.S. citizen, The Fix reported.
