Need-Based Aid, Racial Proportionality, and the College Work-Study Program of the National Youth Administration, 1934-1943

Abstract

Often overshadowed by the GI Bill, the National Youth Administration (NYA) supervised the first federal need-based financial aid program in the United States. Tracing the origin of federal aid back to the era of the NYA reveals that the rationale for need-based assistance rests closer to the core of the American policymaking tradition. This article contributes to previous histories of the NYA by demonstrating how its decentralized implementation empowered local college officials who jeopardized the program’s needs-based intent. Meanwhile, this localized administration also facilitated the NYA’s unusual and relatively successful support for Black college students.

Benito S. immigrated to New Jersey in 1929 and earned a high school diploma at night while working as a shoemaker. With help from a campus job subsidized by the National Youth Administration (NYA) and part-time employment at a restaurant, he went on to graduate from Rutgers University. He received near-perfect grades and planned to become a professor of romance languages. Taking advantage of the same New Deal program, Betty B. secured a position playing piano for dance and physical education classes while attending East Central Junior College in Mississippi. Her excellent academic performance qualified her for a scholarship at a four-year institution.¹ Although Benito and Betty were unusually strong students, any young person with financial need who earned passing grades was eligible for a NYA work-study position. By 1940, one-tenth of college students in the United States earned income from jobs that were funded by the NYA.² According to the president of Chico State College, the program was “a godsend” during that difficult time.³

However, the NYA appears briefly, if at all, in most scholarly treatments of the development of federal financial aid. Chris Loss addressed this omission with an analysis of the NYA in Between Citizens and the State, a study of federal involvement in higher education during the twentieth century.⁴ More recently, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer devoted a chapter to the program in Indentured Students, a history of the college loan industry.⁵ As Loss has noted, scholars tend to underestimate the extent of public investment in colleges and universities during the 1930s because of the strong gravitational pull of the GI Bill.⁶ The relatively light amount of attention paid to the NYA has meant that most histories of federal financial aid suggest that need-based grants were unusual before the Higher Education Act of 1965.⁷ On a rare occasion when a scholar of twenty-first-century higher education policy refers to the NYA, it appears as a “short-lived” experiment that was primarily a relief program rather than a model for later financial aid initiatives.⁸

Building on the work of Loss and Shermer, this study makes two contributions to the history of the NYA’s college work-study program. First, whereas Beyond Citizens and the State and Indentured Students focus on the program’s public-private partnerships and related debates about the role of federal power, this article highlights the manner in which the NYA’s deference to local institutions generated tension between the program’s unprecedented need-based approach and colleges’ inclination to favor applicants with higher grade point averages. Until the New Deal, purely need-based public financial aid was uncommon. Most state scholarship programs targeted students with special claims to public resources (veterans or their children), students studying subjects that were seen as particularly vital to economic development (farming or engineering), or students preparing for careers in public service (teachers or ministers).⁹ Before the 1930s, less than a fifth of scholarships awarded to students at land-grant colleges were primarily need-based in nature.¹⁰ The story of the NYA indicates how the Great Depression nudged policymakers toward greater recognition of the impact of poverty on college access. Tracing the roots of federal financial aid back to this program instead of the GI Bill reveals that this emphasis on need predated the merit-based rationale of rewarding veterans for their service. Yet disagreement between federal officials (who prioritized financial need) and local college officials (who often favored students with high grades) threatened to dilute the NYA’s impact.¹¹

Second, this article contributes to extant scholarship by demonstrating that the program’s decentralized administration and emphasis on need-based aid enabled the NYA to distribute more funding to Black students than might be expected. In contrast with most other New Deal agencies, in which localized disbursement tended to favor White men, the NYA’s reliance on college officials to select recipients sometimes benefited students of color and, to a lesser extent, women students. Though the NYA made no attempt to challenge segregation, it operated the first public financial aid program that aimed for racial proportionality. The extent of the NYA’s success in this domain stemmed from its sympathetic leadership, commitment to hiring significant numbers of Black staff members, and allocation of funds directly to institutions of higher education, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

The NYA and Higher Education in the 1930s

The New Deal’s investment in college access may seem unexpected because higher education was not a default path for maintaining or obtaining middle-class status in the United States during this era. In the 1930s, less than a third of adolescents graduated from high school.¹² Although college attendance doubled in the 1920s, only 8 percent of people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four attended college during the following decade. By 1940, just 5 percent of the population had earned a college degree and less than half possessed more than an eighth-grade education.¹³ School attendance among students in their early twenties was more common among men (8 percent in 1940) than women (5 percent in 1940).¹⁴ As will be discussed further below, Black students faced particularly steep barriers to higher education.¹⁵

Affordability was one of the main impediments to college, though not the sole factor. While most public universities were free or nearly free in the nineteenth century, tuition became common and more substantial during the first decades of the twentieth century. By the 1920s, personal wealth was the most significant determinant of college attendance.¹⁶ In 1930, less than 6 percent of college students were children of “unskilled” workers.¹⁷ The Great Depression accelerated this trend as institutions relied increasingly on tuition and fees to compensate for lower state appropriations and decreased private philanthropy. Between 1932 and 1934, for example, eight public universities started charging tuition for the first time.¹⁸ During that two-year period, college attendance dropped by 10 percent.¹⁹ Institutional scholarships and loan funds were exhausted after supporting a small fraction of eligible students.²⁰ Part-time employment became difficult to secure. Without that source of income, many college students struggled to pay for food or shelter.²¹ One student recalled being “half starved” and heartbroken when faced with the prospect of dropping out.²² Another slept alongside his dog in a park, abandoned house, or school building.²³ A Michigan student felt a “continual struggle to overcome the temptation to steal” in order to feed himself.²⁴

When the Roosevelt administration began introducing federal relief programs, college presidents requested a New Deal initiative to support these students. The first tentative step consisted of a pilot program that subsidized campus jobs at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1933. Minnesota was selected as the preliminary site after Governor Floyd Olson, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party, lobbied for federal funding to assist the state’s college students. Originally operated by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the program went national in spring of 1934 and was absorbed by the NYA during the following year. The NYA also operated a similar work-study program at the high school level. The initial budget for the higher education portion of the program was intended to provide on- or off-campus employment for a hundred thousand students.²⁵ During its nine years of operation, the program served more than six hundred thousand college students at private and public institutions alike.²⁶ The NYA’s willingness to disburse aid through private colleges was consistent with a long-standing tradition of state support for privately administered benefits despite, or because of, their tendency to support relatively privileged recipients.²⁷

As mentioned above, these young people constituted a small and, on average, advantaged segment of the population. Five years into the program, President Roosevelt still expressed trepidation about offering assistance to college students.²⁸ Yet Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five experienced the worst unemployment rates in the nation, with roughly a quarter out of school and unable to find jobs. This group represented a sixth of the population but over a third of applicants for work programs during the early years of the Depression.²⁹ Roosevelt and his advisers worried that these young people could be recruited by fascist or communist organizations if they abandoned their educational and vocational goals.³⁰ The NYA’s jobs program, in particular, appealed to policymakers, because helping students to stay in school was less expensive than expanding the capacity of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) or the Works Progress Administration (WPA).³¹ Legislators appreciated that support for these students could ease the financial burdens faced by their families.³² FDR came to believe that a program for college students would seem less like socialism than aid for high school dropouts. He may have been swayed in part by Eleanor Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for the idea.³³ Furthermore, the Roosevelt administration hoped that a student jobs program would stimulate the economy and prevent large numbers of young people from undercutting adults in the labor market.³⁴ It is also possible that college students were seen as a particularly “deserving” population because of their academic achievement and professional potential.³⁵

Regardless, the NYA operated the first-ever federal financial aid program for low-income college students.³⁶ The agency’s work-study salaries typically covered half the expenses of students who lived in dorms or virtually all the expenses of students who lived at home. Most students were able to secure additional scholarships or loans from their schools, work a second job, and/or receive help from family members. At the program’s peak, the NYA supported students in 98 percent of institutions of higher education in the United States.³⁷ It aimed to fund work that provided inherent educational value or advanced students’ professional goals.³⁸ Beneficiaries of the program served as research or teaching assistants, provided clerical support for various offices, or worked to maintain campus facilities. Because colleges did not always have enough jobs to occupy all eligible students, others were paid to work for private companies or community organizations.³⁹ This approach exemplified the New Deal’s tendency to favor work-based programs rather than direct relief.⁴⁰

The model was politically savvy because it tapped into a romanticized tradition of campus employment and prevented critics from claiming that the program fostered dependency.⁴¹ Self-supporting students had always been common, and many colleges began operating their own student employment offices after tuition charges increased around the turn of the century. By the 1920s, self-supporting students no longer worried as much about social stigma or overt discrimination from wealthier classmates. Even before the onset of the Depression, nearly half of the men and a quarter of the women who attended college relied on some sort of employment.⁴² In a sense, a program that subsidized these positions seemed akin to merit-based aid, because the work itself demonstrated the worthiness of recipients. College administrators celebrated the NYA’s work requirement because it countered stereotypical portrayals of lazy or effete students. According to the president of Murray State Teachers College, many students could be seen leaving workplaces with “grease on their faces and grease on their hands.”⁴³ Some legislators appreciated that the program reminded them of the jobs they had held while attending college.⁴⁴

While these elements of the NYA’s work-study program were modeled on past practices, the initiative marked the first time that the administrators of a public financial aid program aimed for equitable distribution of benefits in terms of gender and race. In general, New Deal work programs targeted men, who were assumed to be the primary or sole wage earners for their families.⁴⁵ In contrast, the NYA obligated colleges to administer aid along the same gender ratio of their campuses, though this specification was removed before the start of the 1935-36 school year.⁴⁶ Still, colleges disbursed around 40 percent of NYA aid to women, a figure that approximated their proportion of college enrollment in the 1930s.⁴⁷

National NYA officials were even more concerned with promoting access for students of color, which explains why this article focuses more on race than gender. Ultimately, the NYA enabled HBCUs to fund work-study positions for forty-five thousand students. This figure amounted to 6 percent of the college-going recipients of NYA support—much less than the percentage of Black students in the K-12 school population (13 percent in 1940), but greater than their representation among high school graduates (5 percent) or college students (2 percent) nationwide.⁴⁸ The NYA tended to employ a binary lens when analyzing race. For example, the organization’s Division of Minority Affairs was renamed the Division of Negro Affairs. Usually the NYA only collected data about the numbers of “White” and “Black” students, though Asian American and Latine students also participated in the program.⁴⁹ The one exception appears to be the final report of the Division of Negro Affairs, which listed participation in all NYA programs (including its high school program) as 12 percent Black students, 1.5 percent Native American or Asian American students, and 86.5 percent White students (Latine students were counted as White).⁵⁰

Decentralization and Need-Based Aid

While the fraction of the population attending college remained relatively low during the Great Depression, the pool of students in need of financial assistance expanded. During the 1930s, the proportion of seventeen-year-old students graduating from high school increased from 29 percent to 50 percent, in part because there were fewer jobs to divert them from academics.⁵¹ At the same time, more young people intended to enter professions that required college degrees.⁵² As a result, demand for the NYA’s work-study program was high. More than one and a half times more students applied for aid than could be supported by the agency’s budget.⁵³ The Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University, for example, reported that NYA funding could only support half of its eligible students. The University of Maine received over 500 applications during the 1937-38 academic year but had funds for only 150 students.⁵⁴ Virginia institutions of higher education reported being “flooded” with work-study applications.⁵⁵

Since the number of struggling students far exceeded the available funding, Harry Hopkins (who supervised the program during its first year of operation) proposed awarding aid to those who earned the highest scores on an exam the NYA would administer. Some college leaders agreed that the NYA should target high-achieving students regardless of whether they had the most financial need.⁵⁶ Other members of the Roosevelt administration, including the president, predicted that this approach would make the work-study program appear inaccessible. Roosevelt believed that it was more important for recipients to be “needy” than high performing.⁵⁷ Some administrators suggested that the entire notion of aiding college students could be seen as elitist.⁵⁸ Even a wholly need-based application process would still exclude large swaths of the population, especially in rural communities that lacked access to high-quality schools and colleges.⁵⁹

Therefore, federal officials were determined to require colleges to focus on students with substantial financial need. The NYA expected applicants to prove that they would not be able to remain enrolled without a work-study position.⁶⁰ In 1937, budget cuts prompted the program to issue stricter guidelines to govern the fiercer competition for aid that ensued. Federal officials directed colleges to scrutinize NYA applications in order to avoid accidentally providing assistance to students who were in less-than-dire circumstances.⁶¹

Ultimately, NYA administrators agreed that adding a substantial academic threshold based on grades or test scores would undermine political support for the program. At first, program regulations stipulated that recipients must be capable of producing “high grade” college work. By 1936, the NYA loosened this requirement from “high grade” to “good.”⁶² Eventually, the threshold merely required applicants to demonstrate the “ability to do college work,” which some federal officials defined as earning grades higher than F.⁶³ This shift reflected an ever-present worry that emphasizing academic qualifications rather than financial need could cause a scandal by diverting aid to wealthier students. NYA director Aubrey Williams expressed concern that the negative publicity stemming from “one poor selection” could jeopardize the program. Williams urged colleges to focus on whether aid was “essential” for applicants to enter or remain in school.⁶⁴ Mary McLeod Bethune, director of the NYA’s Division of Negro Affairs, recommended that only students whose families met the requirements for federal relief should be eligible for work-study subsidies.⁶⁵ Although the agency did not enact that requirement, its national guidelines attempted to dissuade colleges from distributing aid in a regressive manner.

The NYA did not provide strict oversight of these guidelines. Aside from requiring applicants to demonstrate their financial need and basic academic competence, the program delegated authority for selection and job placement to each campus. In practice, this meant that the NYA promulgated broad guidance and entrusted day-to-day administration to hundreds of college officials.⁶⁶ This reliance on local intermediaries, even in the private sector, was a common feature of New Deal programs.⁶⁷ With respect to the NYA, this decentralized approach was intended to appease a faction of legislators and college presidents who expressed alarm about the prospect of national overreach.⁶⁸ In theory, cooperation with quasi-governmental actors could serve progressive or conservative ends, though this approach tended to steer federal aid away from the most marginalized communities.⁶⁹

In the case of the NYA’s college aid program, institutions of higher education created their own methods for determining the extent of applicants’ financial need—methods that could enable funding to flow to relatively privileged students. Some institutions established rigorous procedures for ascertaining family wealth. Ohio State University required applicants for NYA positions to submit a personal budget, along with questionnaires completed by a school district official, a local leader of their choice (such as a pastor), and a state relief official.⁷⁰ Birmingham-Southern College started interviewing applicants after it realized that some applicants did not really require assistance.⁷¹ Roughly one-tenth of institutions directed their staff members to investigate students’ financial statements.⁷²

However, many other schools took students at their word. Over a third of participating institutions merely required a statement of need from an applicant or a parent.⁷³ Officials at Oberlin College, for instance, felt that it would be too invasive to pry into the personal finances of students and their families.⁷⁴ Administrators at other colleges, especially rural institutions with low enrollment, believed that they were already familiar enough with the backgrounds of their students or could consult students’ previous requests for loans, scholarships, or campus jobs.⁷⁵ Yet the information provided by students and their families could be unreliable, and community members and administrators tended to support applications from high-achieving young people regardless of whether they had significant financial need.⁷⁶

Even at institutions that attempted to verify students’ finances, the large number of eligible applicants still invited administrators to weigh academic performance in ways that could dilute the need-based intent of the program.⁷⁷ Owing to the relationship between wealth and academic opportunity, consideration of academic “merit” tended to direct work-study positions away from students facing the most difficult financial circumstances. NYA officials started to worry that some colleges seemed to select students primarily based on their scholarly record, a practice that threatened to undermine “the fundamental purpose” of the program.⁷⁸ At Howard University, which received twelve hundred applications for two hundred positions during the 1938-39 academic year, most students were rejected if they had less than a B average.⁷⁹ Purdue University asked applicants’ high school teachers or principals to state whether students learned quickly compared with their classmates.⁸⁰ After confirming that students had a baseline level of need, the University of Virginia granted NYA jobs to applicants who demonstrated the most “ability and promise.”⁸¹ Similarly, the University of Minnesota awarded NYA positions only to students who were in the top half of their high school class or earned at least a B average. When that cutoff still yielded too many eligible applicants, the university prioritized those with the highest grades—a decision that led to recipients having a median high school rank in the 84th percentile (compared with a median ranking in the 46th percentile for rejected students). Predictably, the students who received NYA jobs were wealthier, on average, than applicants who were turned away.⁸² To minimize the perception that privileged students received NYA jobs, some colleges prohibited recipients from joining sororities or fraternities or spending money on “luxuries.”⁸³

Yet other college officials lobbied to relax the NYA’s definition of financial need so that they could more freely support high-achieving students regardless of their wealth. These administrators argued that students should be eligible as long as a work-study position would improve their health and performance. In response, the NYA eventually agreed to modify its policy so that colleges could award slots to students who just needed some aid to remain in school “properly.”⁸⁴

Nevertheless, despite their preference for students with higher grades, colleges awarded 43 percent of NYA funding to applicants from families whose main wage-earner was unemployed, performed manual labor, or received assistance from a federal program.⁸⁵ At the University of Minnesota, for example, the parents of more than two-thirds of recipients fell into one of those categories.⁸⁶ With uneven results, the NYA encouraged colleges to implement a “broader and more democratic” approach to financial aid rather than prioritizing applicants’ academic transcripts. According to its final report, the program instructed colleges to target financially struggling students who had demonstrated “satisfactory” scholastic records.⁸⁷

At first, some policymakers were concerned that this policy would fund students who were not prepared to take advantage of college-level instruction. In response to these concerns, NYA officials asked institutions to report recipients’ grades and class rank.⁸⁸ Overall, college students who received NYA work-study positions outperformed expectations. Foreshadowing the type of remarks made about World War II veterans, an Alabama administrator observed that the program “brought a more serious group of students to campus.”⁸⁹ Other college officials came to believe that NYA jobs motivated students to focus on their schoolwork because they needed to earn adequate grades to maintain their eligibility.⁹⁰ Journalists commented that this performance was “probably anticipated by no one.”⁹¹ Proponents of the work-study program hoped that the NYA revealed the existence of a “vast reservoir of potential college material.”⁹² According to the agency’s Director of Student Work, the program proved “that ability and economic circumstances have no correlation.”⁹³

By the 1938-39 school year, NYA students earned higher grade point averages (GPAs) than other students at 81 percent of colleges.⁹⁴ At the University of Florida, the GPA of recipients hovered between 2.7 and 2.8 during the life of the program, compared with an average of between 2.0 and 2.3 for the rest of the student body.⁹⁵ At the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College, half of the honor roll consisted of NYA recipients, most of whom ranked in the school’s top quartile.⁹⁶ NYA work-study students at the University of Minnesota scored significantly higher than their classmates on an aptitude test.⁹⁷ A recipient at Lemoyne College earned the second-highest GPA in the history of the institution.⁹⁸ When asked about the performance of the work-study students at the Alabama State Teachers College, the program’s supervisor reported that other faculty routinely commented that “your girls are doing better than my girls.”⁹⁹

Decentralization and Racial Proportionality

Whereas decentralization threatened the need-based intent of the college work-study program, this institution-level decision-making expanded its distribution of funding to Black applicants. The NYA’s reliance on administrators at HBCUs and racially moderate (albeit unwelcoming) predominantly White institutions (PWIs) in the North enabled Black students to access a substantial amount of aid. Like the New Deal overall, the NYA did not attempt to promote racial integration. New Deal leaders tended to delegate implementation to local authorities in order to placate the southern wing of the Democratic Party.¹⁰⁰ Yet national NYA leaders monitored the demographics of the program’s beneficiaries and made a concerted effort to fund HBCUs and Black students attending northern and western PWIs.¹⁰¹ This commitment set the NYA apart from other New Deal programs, most of which were designed with localized control that facilitated racial discrimination.¹⁰² Even though New Deal legislation and guidelines were drafted in an ostensibly race-neutral manner, officials rarely paid attention to the extent of racist implementation.¹⁰³ For example, the local disbursement of federal relief funds enabled officials to steer funding away from unemployed Black people in many jurisdictions.¹⁰⁴

The work-study program emerged as an exception to this pattern, perhaps because the low profile of higher education in this era allowed college officials to award work-study positions to Black students without attracting as much scrutiny from White supremacists.¹⁰⁵ It is also possible that the work-study program enjoyed freer rein because American higher education was so thoroughly segregated. Whereas the decentralized bureaucracy of other New Deal programs empowered local officials to limit the assistance provided to people of color, the NYA’s reliance on college administrators meant that HBCUs were able to direct federal assistance to substantial numbers of Black students.

As mentioned earlier, Black students ultimately received 6 percent of the NYA’s college work-study positions (an additional 2 percent of the positions went to students of “other races”). While this total was smaller than the percentage of Black people in the population as a whole, it exceeded the percentage of Black students in the nation’s colleges and universities. Despite the dedication of Black educators, college access for Black young people was limited by a lack of accessible secondary schools (especially in rural regions) and a greater need to earn wages. When the NYA was established, 19 percent of Black children between the ages of fourteen and seventeen attended high school, compared with 55 percent of White children.¹⁰⁶ In southern states, the number of high schools that enrolled Black students increased in the 1920s, but many remained small, underfunded, and unaccredited. Two hundred counties had a significant Black population but no four-year high school that served Black young people.¹⁰⁷

In light of this relatively small pipeline of eligible students, NYA administrators exhibited a notable level of concern for racial equity. To some extent, this commitment reflected the political dynamics of the moment. As has been well documented, FDR’s dedication to civil rights was limited, but the modest attention that New Deal programs directed toward Black communities expanded the base of the Democratic Party and increased the influence of Black leaders within the Roosevelt administration.¹⁰⁸ In the case of the NYA, Robert Weaver, an official in the Department of the Interior, encouraged the new agency to hire Black staff members who would pay special attention to racial proportionality.¹⁰⁹ Mary McLeod Bethune was the most prominent NYA official in this respect. An educator and president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, Bethune became the highest-ranking Black woman in the federal government when Roosevelt appointed her as the NYA’s Director of Negro Affairs. Along with Howard University president Mordecai Johnson, Bethune participated in the initial planning of the NYA and lobbied for the inclusion of Black officials at the state level.¹¹⁰ Bethune traveled to NYA field offices, once visiting twenty-one states in a year, to inquire about the treatment of Black applicants and staff members.¹¹¹ As she mentioned to a group of supervisors, Bethune provided a “tender reminder” to NYA administrators about the importance of steering aid toward Black college students.¹¹²

Bethune received a sympathetic hearing from NYA director Aubrey Williams, a White Alabamian with socialist leanings and a background in social work. Williams worked to insulate the NYA from the influence of other New Deal agencies, such as the CCC, because he understood that the administrators of those programs were likely to tolerate or promote discrimination.¹¹³ Once referred to as “one of the most radical men in the country” by a New York congressperson, Williams’s racial liberalism and leftist political views attracted criticism from White supremacists who would eventually vote to shutter the NYA after the Roosevelt coalition lost control of Congress. He agreed with Bethune about the need for Black staff members at the state level and encouraged NYA officials to strive for proportional distribution of aid. Under the leadership of Bethune and Williams, the NYA was widely viewed as the most racially progressive New Deal agency. Black students participating in its programs joked that the NYA was the “Negro Youth Administration.”¹¹⁴

Most notably, Aubrey Williams instructed state offices to appoint at least one Black person to their advisory councils. Seventeen states complied with that directive, while nineteen states appointed administrative assistants to positions that directed aid to HBCUs or Black students attending PWIs.¹¹⁵ In large part due to Bethune’s efforts, Black officials constituted 10 percent of the NYA’s staff during its final year of operation and played a vital advocacy role at the state level.¹¹⁶ With the support of Bethune and Williams, these staff members wielded an unprecedented amount of influence.¹¹⁷

As was the case with all New Deal programs, White southern politicians nevertheless limited the influence of Black leaders.¹¹⁸ Texas provides a noteworthy case. Fearing the political repercussions that might stem from appointing a Black person to an advisory council, Lyndon Baines Johnson, director of the NYA’s Texas office, disregarded Bethune’s advocacy and instead created a separate advisory board with six Black members.¹¹⁹ Johnson’s office attempted to minimize press coverage of NYA funding for HBCUs and encouraged Black administrators to focus on work programs that operated outside of schools or colleges.¹²⁰ Still, the Texas NYA ultimately provided more support, in percentage terms, to Black high school and college students (24 percent of eligible youth received positions) than White students (14 percent of eligible youth received positions).¹²¹ Statewide, Black young people comprised 7 percent of college enrollment and 8.5 percent of recipients of the NYA’s college aid.¹²²

Elsewhere in the South, the results were less impressive. The NYA officials who were charged with promoting racial equity reported that “eternal vigilance” was required to ensure that Black students received proportional aid.¹²³ Bethune urged state offices to track and publish the rates of Black participation in their programs to create greater accountability. In 1936, she noted that none of the seven states that distributed disproportionately low aid to Black students had a single Black staff member. The worst examples were Arkansas (Black people constituted 26 percent of the state but received 13 percent of NYA funding), Tennessee (18 percent and 11 percent), and Mississippi (50 percent and 10 percent).¹²⁴ Ultimately, HBCUs received less than half of the funding that would have been allocated if the program had determined aid levels strictly according to population size.¹²⁵ And as Bethune and other Black NYA officials noted, the most equitable funding metric was not population size, because Black people experienced disproportionate levels of unemployment.¹²⁶

Although they did not achieve a uniform level of success across all states, Bethune and her colleagues still appeared to have influenced the NYA’s operations. As more Black administrators came on board, work-study aid was distributed in a more equitable manner.¹²⁷ The program failed to achieve racial proportionality in every state, but it managed to far exceed the track record of the previous instance of federal education funding—the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.¹²⁸ NYA regulations prohibited discrimination and, unlike other federal relief organizations, the college aid program paid the same wages to White students and students of color.¹²⁹ Compared with the CCC, the NYA exercised greater oversight and facilitated fairer disbursement of its funds through the offices of college administrators.¹³⁰ Perhaps because of its use of HBCUs and northern PWIs as intermediaries, the NYA’s college aid program distributed aid more proportionately than its non-college work program.¹³¹

In more than a third of states, the percentage of Black college students receiving aid fell within 5 percent of their overall proportion of the population, a notable result considering the aforementioned gap in high school graduation rates.¹³² In California, Black students comprised less than 1 percent of the state’s college enrollment but received 2.5 percent of the NYA’s college aid.¹³³ Black students received 3 percent of the NYA aid distributed by Ohio State University at a time when they constituted 2 percent of enrollment.¹³⁴ In order to approach a proportional outcome, the University of Illinois awarded work-study positions to 27 percent of Black applicants and 13 percent of White applicants.¹³⁵ According to the NYA’s Supervisor for Colored Activities in New Jersey, college aid was “administered fairly and squarely” in the state.¹³⁶ In Nebraska, where there were very few Black students, the NYA reported that the racial demographics of the aid program matched enrollment in the state’s colleges.¹³⁷ Similarly, administrators in Wyoming claimed to pay “special attention” to the treatment of the small number of Black students in the state.¹³⁸ While these reports should be taken with a grain of salt, it seems clear that the NYA endorsed the principle of racial proportionality, especially when Black administrators occupied positions within state offices.

In 1935, the NYA exhibited this commitment to equity by launching a separate fund dedicated to the education of southern Black students. A rare precursor to racially “affirmative” policymaking, the fund emerged from a conference in which a NYA deputy sought the advice of Black leaders. In response to this feedback, the agency earmarked $105,000 for Black college and graduate students. Between 1936 and 1943, this fund supported over four thousand students, most of whom were southerners who traveled north to attend PWIs.¹³⁹ Although less affected by this funding, HBCUs remained supportive of the college aid program. When the NYA was on the verge of being discontinued, the presidents of every major HBCUs lobbied for its preservation.¹⁴⁰

While its distribution of aid was more equitable than other New Deal agencies, the NYA was unable to counteract the segregation of local labor markets. Black participants were more likely to be assigned to unskilled jobs despite the program’s goal of subsidizing positions that would enrich students’ education.¹⁴¹ Students attending HBCUs fared better because they had access to the full range of on-campus opportunities. At Fisk College, for example, only four out of forty-eight positions were unskilled during the 1937-38 academic year.¹⁴² Tougaloo College used NYA funding to pay student workers to be classroom aides at its campus elementary school.¹⁴³ Overall, more than 40 percent of Black students worked in professional or semi-professional roles as a result of NYA funding. These students served as teaching assistants or research assistants, as well as in various capacities at laboratories, museums, libraries, and community organizations. Another 20 percent provided clerical support, while roughly 30 percent worked in construction, dining services, childcare, or domestic labor.¹⁴⁴

Conclusion

Historians of financial aid often refer to the GI Bill as the first time that low-income students demonstrated that they could thrive when provided with federal support.¹⁴⁵ Yet it seems likely that policymakers felt comfortable endorsing the higher education section of the GI Bill in part because of the strong performance of the NYA’s beneficiaries. Passed one year after the dismantling of the NYA, the GI Bill incorporated elements of the earlier college aid program.¹⁴⁶ In particular, the GI Bill’s modest threshold for academic eligibility mirrored the approach of the NYA, which attempted to restrain local campus officials who tended to favor greater selectivity. At first, the committee that drafted the GI Bill recommended that only veterans with “special aptitudes” should receive more than a year of tuition assistance. Other policymakers argued that too many veterans would prove to be ill suited for college unless the program was limited to those who could demonstrate that their pursuit of higher education had been disrupted by the war. Perhaps encouraged by the example of the NYA, which required just a “satisfactory” academic background, a congressional alliance of northern conservatives and southern populists responded that it would be un-American to exclude any veteran with a “creditable” GPA. Ultimately, the final version of the bill only required passing grades and provided benefits regardless of whether a veteran’s prewar educational trajectory had been interrupted.¹⁴⁷ Two decades later, the legacy of the NYA would become more apparent when Lyndon Johnson’s experience in the agency’s Texas office inspired his support for a federal work-study program within the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.¹⁴⁸

It matters whether the NYA is recognized as the starting point for federal financial aid. First, highlighting the significance of the NYA confers more legitimacy to the concept of need-based assistance by locating the origin of this policy farther back in time. Second, the NYA was a more explicit response to economic pressures faced by students. While the authors of the GI Bill were motivated in part by similar concerns about the threat that could be posed by masses of unemployed young people, the legislation also intended to reward veterans for their wartime service. In that sense, the GI Bill was a merit-based program.¹⁴⁹ Since the NYA was framed primarily as a provider of need-based aid, tracing the origin of federal financial aid to the NYA rather than the GI Bill positions need-based aid closer to the core of the US policymaking tradition.

Another difference between the NYA and the GI Bill is starker and more significant. The NYA distributed aid in a manner that was more racially proportionate than other New Deal programs. In contrast, the GI Bill facilitated severe and intentional discrimination. The degree of Black representation among NYA officials had no analogue within the administration of the GI Bill. Anticipating that Black veterans would receive better treatment from Black staff members, the NAACP urged the Veterans Administration to diversify its workforce during the 1940s.¹⁵⁰ Instead, the GI Bill stipulated that virtually all authority be delegated to White-dominated state education agencies that, in many cases, enforced segregation and exhibited little concern for equity.¹⁵¹ Furthermore, the GI Bill, unlike the NYA, provided no additional funding to expand access to higher education for Black students in southern states, even though more than one million Black veterans returned from the war. As a result, tens of thousands of eligible Black veterans were unable to receive college tuition subsidies when southern HBCUs reached their enrollment capacity.¹⁵²

Despite its contributions to college access, the NYA’s work-study program ended in 1943, after Republican victories in the midterm congressional elections and a falling wartime unemployment rate prompted a retreat from the New Deal.¹⁵³ Although concerns had started to emerge about whether the NYA diverted young people and resources away from the military, even a skeptical congressperson acknowledged that the program had generated “overwhelming” public support for the concept of federal financial aid.¹⁵⁴ In concrete terms, the NYA may have contributed to a modest increase in access to higher education—the percentage of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old students attending college rose from 7 percent in 1930 to 9 percent in 1940.¹⁵⁵ Perhaps more importantly, the program helped to change the perception of college by attracting greater attention to the prevalence of capable low-income students of all races and genders, including large numbers of young people who had not earned stellar GPAs in high school.¹⁵⁶ This publicity emboldened college leaders and their political allies to seek ongoing federal assistance to replace the New Deal’s short-term program.¹⁵⁷ In 1947, when the authors of the landmark Truman Commission report on higher education advocated for federal funding for need-based scholarships, they cited the performance of NYA students as proof of the existence of a large pool of young people who could benefit from financial aid.¹⁵⁸ At a time when free or almost-free public higher education remained a familiar concept, the NYA encouraged advocates to hope that a return to that policy might be on the horizon.¹⁵⁹