Chronically starved for resources, these schools have used federal emergency funds to help more students keep going and graduate. What happens when the money is gone? Published in partnership with the hechingerreport.
From March 2020 to this March, Congress approved about $76 billion in aid to colleges and universities as part of three federal relief packages. Schools could use it to cover the extra costs associated with Covid-19 and were required to award almost half the total to students as emergency grants.
“When that student meets with an academic adviser now, they’re not talking about, ‘Oh, are you babysitting at this time?’ They’re talking about long-term goals. They’re talking about internships,” he said. The new money also paid for extra equipment, like lathes, milling machines and band saws, for the school’s workforce training center so students in the advanced manufacturing programs could remain socially distanced. That brought a side benefit that will last beyond the pandemic: Previously, students took turns on the machines, one observing and one working; now they get more individual time on the equipment.
Polnariev said the college also saw students dealing with more mental health challenges than ever. So in June the school used HEERF funds to hire two social workers to help with counseling services and to connect students with area nonprofits for help with food, housing and health insurance. He worries that HEERF funding has temporarily masked the chronic underfunding of community colleges compared with their four-year counterparts. New Jersey’sper student annually than its four-year institutions do, according to an October 2020 analysis from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning Washington think tank.
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