Junior broadcast reporting and broadcast production double major Matt Kruth is just one of 950 Point Park students who expected to receive a Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) grant this school year.
Between this grant and his other financial aid rewards, he expected a refund check of $6,500 to help pay for his off-campus apartment; however, he received just $2,000 due to the Pennsylvania budget impasse.
In order to make ends meet, Kruth not only had to change his spending habits, but he also had to pull significantly from his savings.
“I just had to really pay attention to my spending over the course of the whole process,” Kruth said. “It’s been really hard at times. The biggest thing I’ve had to do though was cutting into my savings. I’ve gone through almost all of my savings just to pay rent over the last couple of months.”
Though the state has yet to pass a budget, a recent action by the state’s General Assembly and Governor Tom Wolf has appropriated roughly $305 million to PHEAA’s Pennsylvania State Grant Program.
This means students are one step closer to getting the money they expected, but the overall amount is less than predicted. Wolf originally requested that PHEAA receive $344.8 million, so this appropriation is an 11.5 percent decrease from that original sum.
There are 153,585 students who qualify for the state grant, which means the original $344.8 million request averaged out to $2,245 per student. The $305 million appropriation averages out to $1,985 a student, which is a cut of approximately $260 per student.
“I honestly didn’t find the cut to be a problem,” Kruth said. “I just want the money. I don’t really care if it’s a little less.”
Despite the cut being minimal, PHEAA decided something needed to be done to honor the commitments the agency made. According to Keith New, PHEAA spokesman, the agency had previously set aside $75 million from its personal reserves for the grant program. However, the agency’s board of directors recently decided to set aside an additional $11-50 million to try and cover the decrease.
“The board wanted to make sure to disburse funds as quickly as possible,” New said. “We wanted to honor those commitments and ensure that we would meet the amount students and schools were expecting.”
For students trying to pay for college, every dollar counts, so this act of good will did not go unnoticed.
“My respect for PHEAA has definitely increased,” senior broadcast reporting and broadcast production and media management double major Brittany Lauffer said. “Especially to honor the amount the students expected when the situation wasn’t their fault is admirable and greatly appreciated.”
According to New, now that PHEAA has settled on the allocation, the refund process will begin. He explained that all grant money will be sent to the schools, and disbursed from there. The schools will begin receiving the funds within two weeks, New said.
According to George Santucci, director of financial aid at Point Park, the refund process is really in PHEAA’s hands. There is nothing Point Park can do until PHEAA releases the grant money to the school.
“Once we get the money from PHEAA, we will work to get the funding out to the students as soon as possible,” Santucci said.
For the students affected by the impassé this process has been a rude awakening to the dark side of politics.
“The impassé as a whole has been a mess in my opinion,” Kruth said. “I know that I’m not always going to get what I want, but the politicians don’t seem to understand that concept, and it comes at the expense of the people who rely on them to get their jobs done.”
Lauffer is one of the students who relied on the government to help pay for her education. Because of the impasse, she was forced to pick up extra hours at work and she even had to find other freelance opportunities to make up the cost.
“To have a new governor that has this many problems with his fellow politicians is frustrating,” Lauffer said. “It was hard knowing that I worked holidays to compensate for the missing funds while they took days off even though the budget was so many months late.”
Even though the money is on the way, these students have reiterated that they won’t be happy until the money is finally in their hands.
