Feds Use Student Loan Repayment Benefits to Lure IT Pros

At a time when agency budgets are tight, federal employees are increasingly benefiting more from student loan repayment programs, according to a new report by the Office of Personnel Management.
 
The report found that in 2010, 36 federal agencies provided 11,359 employees a total of nearly $85.7 million in student loan repayment benefits. That's a 34 percent increase in the number of employees receiving such benefits and a 38 percent increase in agencies’ overall financial investment in the incentive over 2009 levels. The average loan repayment benefit in 2010 was $7,542, OPM found.
 
The Defense, Justice and State departments offered more than 68 percent of overall student loan repayment benefits offered in 2010. In fact, the majority of the increase in repayment benefits can be attributed to Defense’s increased investment of an additional $15.5 million into the program, which it says helped recruit and retain high quality candidates for critical positions. “Consistently, employee feedback has indicated that the student loan repayment program is a major factor in recipients’ decisions to accept a position with DoD,” OPM Director John Berry said in the report.
 
Information technology specialists and managers were among the top fields federal agencies recruited for using the student loan repayment incentives. For example, IT specialists or managers accounted for 252 of the total incentives given. Other IT jobs, like computer science and computer engineering, accounted for 87 of the incentives given.
 
Still, Berry cautioned agencies to only use student loan repayment programs strategically to ensure that the cost of the program is commensurate with the benefits gained.  “In our current budget climate, agencies should be mindful that the use of discretionary tools such as student loan repayments deserves close monitoring and must be evaluated as part of an agency’s overall human capital expenditures,” he said.