Low-income students must increasingly rely on work and loans to meet the high costs of college. Too often, though, the jobs they take are not in their field of study, which can impair the potential for career exploration and improved employment outcomes in the future. Despite the need to combine work and school in a meaningful way, only a limited number of students have been able to finance a portion of their education through one of the nation's oldest forms of financial assistance and largest subsidized work programs: the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program. This brief aims to highlight the key challenges of the FWS program at meeting the needs of low-income and post-traditional students and provide initial recommendations to reform the program. In particular it focuses on the challenges and reforms to providing career-focused placements. The following are appended: "Matching Formula Requirements" and "List of Institutions Interviewed."