Targeting Higher-Wage Employment: Increasing Access to Higher Education

• What it is and why it works
• Approaches
• State and federal legislation
• Resources pertaining to this strategy

What it is and why it works

Education has always been a key to economic independence. Yet, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 restricted low-income women's access to higher education to promote rapid attachment to employment or "work first" under the new welfare system, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Thus, students enrolled in college must meet strict work requirements of the welfare reform law and take approved courses that qualify as "vocational educational training." Currently, states can count only twelve months of vocational education as a work activity for TANF recipients.

Increasing access to higher education as a targeting higher-wage employment strategy includes working around these restrictions, providing supports for low-income parents in college, and organizing to make policy change at the local, state and federal levels.

Approaches

• Women Employed, the lead agency in the Illinois project, succeeded in lessening the restrictions on TANF recipients' access to higher education. They helped convince the then governor to define post-secondary education as an eligible work activity under the Illinois Work Pays TANF system, which, unlike any other state, allows welfare recipients to work and stay on welfare with no time limits. Women Employed promotes a statewide advocacy agenda to increase women's employment opportunities through education and training. Contact Jennifer King, Women Employed, (312) 782-3902 or jking@womenemployed.org.

• The Center for Women Policy Studies, Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center of CUNY, McAuley Institute and WOW co-hosted a national conference, Welfare Reform and The College Option, in September, 1999, to address TANF recipients' access to higher education. LIFEtimE—an Oakland, CA-based Californians for Family Economic Self-Sufficiency coalition member that organizes low-income parents in college—was featured in several workshops and a plenary session for its work to expand its low-income student parent peer support program throughout California. Over the past two years LIFEtimE has assisted similar student groups and policymakers devise strategies to support welfare recipients' school programs in a "work-first" environment. Contact Diana Spatz, LIFEtimE, (510) 452-5192 or dspatz@hotmail.com.