When Flora Wang ’13 went looking for an on-campus job, she found many listings were only for students who qualified for federal work study.

Wang was in luck: per her Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) paperwork, the government determined that she was eligible for an on-campus job funded by federal dollars.

Now an employee in the office of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, she said, “it was important for [the office] to hire federal work-study students because it alleviated the financial pressures on them.”

Wang is one of some 400 Stanford students who hold a federal work-study job, according to Mary Morrison, the director of funds management for the Office of Financial Aid. How many more qualify for the program is difficult to determine, Morrison said.

What is clear is that work is available for federally eligible students.

“The students who have the federal funding do not have a problem finding jobs,” Morrison said.

Not all on-campus jobs are federally funded, however, Morrison said.

“There are jobs on campus that have nothing to do with what we consider to be work study,” she said.

The key point of distinction is where the funding originates. For federal work study, students are paid primarily by the government, with the Provost’s office covering the rest; other on-campus jobs are funded by a scattering of University, public and private units.

Not all students take advantage of the work. Some have outside scholarships, or decide not to work for personal reasons.

According to Morrison, many lower-income students have so many scholarships that they don’t actually need to work. Those who do work usually average no more than 12 hours per week during the school year to avoid interfering with academics and extracurricular activities.

For students looking for jobs, many on-campus employers simply announce if they only hire those who qualify for federal work study, and check applicants’ eligibility.

“During my search for a job on campus, a lot of jobs said… federal work study students only—or federal work study students [were] preferred,” Wang said.

For those students who do not qualify for federal work study, jobs can be found through the Career Development Center (CDC). Lance Choy, the center’s director, points students to the online database called Cardinal Careers.

While Cardinal Careers had more than 8,000 listings during the 2008-09 school year, not all departments list their jobs there. Many of these listings are for summer jobs, off-campus work or alumni.

“Many times, professors and staff don’t take the time to post jobs,” Choy wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “The proactive and persistent job seeker can find many opportunities that are never listed.”

Still, the number of students with on-campus jobs, both federally funded and not, is difficult for any single individual to assess. The number of listings in Cardinal Careers has declined from more than 13,000 opportunities during the 2006-07 school year—a decrease Choy said may be attributed to the economic recession’s effect on the job market.

For now, those guaranteed a job by federal calculations have less to worry about, thanks in part to stimulus money that helped sustain Stanford’s work-study program, according to Morrison. And some, including Wang, are happy with the arrangement.

“My friends at Northwestern that are on federal work study get paid $8 an hour,” she said, “and I get paid $12 an hour.”