Assistance program
Federal Work-Study Program
$10.2 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Federal Student Aid, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments for Specified Use
- CFDA number
- 84.033
- What it does
- To provide part-time employment to eligible postsecondary students to help meet educational expenses and encourage students receiving program assistance to participate in community service activities.
- Who benefits
- Undergraduate, graduate, or professional students enrolled or accepted for enrollment as regular students; are maintaining satisfactory academic progress in accordance with the standards and practices of the institution; have financial need; do not owe a refund on a Title IV grant; are not in default on a Title IV loan; file a statement of educational purpose; file a statement of registration compliance (Selective Service); and meet citizen/resident requirements may benefit.
- Who applies
- Higher education institutions (public, private nonprofit, postsecondary vocational, and proprietary) meeting eligibility requirements may apply.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, Title IV, Part C; 42 U.S.C. 2751-2756a.
- Program site
- https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/ ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments