By Matthew Grace

HUNTER COLLEGE, May 10--The campus Welfare Rights Initiative is part of a nationwide movement to change the restrictive 1996 law that effectively bars women on welfare from pursuing higher education.

The initiative is currently advocating for a change in New York law that would allow work-study programs and internships to count towards Workfare requirements.

An estimated 18,000 students have dropped out of CUNY since the 1996 welfare law. That law permits students to count one year in training toward the mandatory Workfare requirement. After that, the law requires welfare recipients to find work fast. At one point, Workfare sites were planned to be placed on all CUNY campuses. However, some campus Workfare sites have closed and others never opened.

If passed, the initiative's proposal could be an important change for CUNY students. However, it does not go as far as other legislative measures under consideration nationwide.

Legislators in such states as Delaware and Ohio are reconsidering the strict emphasis on menial job training that the welfare reforms require.

They are apparently responding to studies that show that welfare recipients who graduate from four-year colleges earn twice as much as those who leave welfare with no education.

In Delaware, state Sen. Patricia M. Blevins drafted a bill last month that would allow welfare recipients to count post-secondary education towards Workfare requirements.

Other bills are currently pending in California, Massachusetts and Ohio that would make allowances for students on welfare. In addition, the former governor of Illinois, Jim Edgar, issued an executive order as one of his last acts in office that will allow welfare recipients to attend college for up to four years in lieu of Workfare requirements.

These innovations indicate some legislators are becoming less wedded to an approach to welfare that focuses almost exclusively on getting people into jobs.

"I am not saying it is wrong, but [the welfare reform] has not allowed for any flexibility. It is a cookie-cutter mentality," says state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Washington, a Democrat who has proposed letting welfare recipients in her state attend college full-time for up to two years.