With a $40.9 Billion Endowment, Harvard Gets $22 Million in Federal Work Study Funding

Harvard received $22.2 million from 2016 until present from the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Work Study Program. The federally funded financial aid program is for U.S. citizens and permanent residents in college and working part time.

While the program benefits students, it also benefits employers — whether the university itself or an outside employer — by giving the subsidy to employers to help pay the student employee.

About 3,400 postsecondary institutions participate, including Harvard, which has a $40.9 billion endowment, the largest such collegiate fund in the country.

That large sum raises the question: should wealthy private universities like Harvard benefit from the federal taxpayer-funded program that subsidizes its cost to employ students?

That question is especially important since Harvard isn’t only employing students in jobs that will help advance their career but in manual labor jobs like cleaning wealthy students dorm rooms.

Harvard could employ students, pay the full rate without any assistance from the federal government and still have quite a pot of money left for the rest of its spending.

Harvard can’t make the argument that it needs government help and should lighten the load on the U.S. taxpayer.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.