Despite university efforts to mitigate the impact on East Stroudsburg University (ESU) students of a nearly five -month long state budget impasse, hundreds continue to face hardships.\u00a0 ESU administrators announced yesterday that institutional funding will be disbursed for the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) grants for all students eligible effective immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have hundreds of students who depend on these grants to pay for off-campus housing, groceries, transportation \u2014 I don\u2019t think people realize the direct impact the budget impasse is having on college students,\u201d David Bousquet, vice president of enrollment management, said.\u00a0 \u201cWe will do everything we can to support these students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over 1,500 students at the university rely on the grants to fund their education. Without a budget, PHEAA cannot release state money to colleges and universities and students are directly impacted.\u00a0 When the fall semester began, the university immediately suspended any balances due from students that would\u2019ve been covered by the PHEAA grants and provided bookstore credit to allow students to purchase textbooks and other course materials.<\/p>\n
Education is everything to Stephen Samaan. A first generation college student coming from a family of modest means, Samaan, a junior majoring in business management, relies heavily on financial aid, college loans and state grants. Entering the fall semester, Samaan struggled with focusing on his classes, spending more time worrying that he might not be able to pay his landlord or purchase groceries for the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a part-time job, took out a second loan and still had to ask my parents to help me,\u201d Samaan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdvancing these funds without receiving immediate reimbursement from the state does have a significant financial hit to the university\u2019s available funds,\u201d said Ken Long, vice president for administration and finance. \u201cBut what\u2019s more significant is the impact the lack of funding has on our students.\u201d<\/p>\n
ESU students are very appreciative of the university\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot that ESU is doing this,\u201d Samaan said. \u201cWe really rely on support from the state for our education and I just hope something happens soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESU to Disburse Institutional Funding for Students Eligible for PHEAA Grant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facebook","category-news-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13173,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13164\/revisions\/13173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}