Scholarship board member Roman Benavente asked Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio to suspend the two statutory scholarships and instead equitably distribute the identified funding to all qualified students.<\/p>\n
According to Benavente, both suspensions will allow the government to extend $2,500 to each qualified student regardless of degree and standing.<\/p>\n
Under Public Law 11-77, recipients of the Full Scholarship will receive 15,000 each year which would cover for tuition, text books, board, lodging and other expenses.<\/p>\n
While, students pursuing the degree in education will continue to receive $12,000 as their Teacher Scholarship grant.<\/p>\n
For students receiving the regular grant under the Educational Assistance Program, they can only rely over $1,000 financial help from the government.<\/p>\n
“They will only get around $550 per semester. As a parent and a member of the scholarship board, I don’t think it’s fair among all recipients,” he told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Benavente said the scholarship office is counting 36 students qualifying for the full scholarship grant but will require over $500,000 government funding.<\/p>\n
For the 75 students who will be pursuing education, some $900,000 will be reserved for next school year.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, close to 800 students with full time status are expected to avail of the regular grant next year. With a little over $1,000 annual assistance, over 400 students are going off island, while 300 are expected to attend the Northern Marianas College.<\/p>\n
In addition, the loan program will still be suspended next school year.<\/p>\n
“With the budget short fall, both statutory scholarships should be automatically be suspended for the time being until such time that enough funding will be available,” he said.<\/p>\n
In an interview, he said off-island students deserve to get additional assistance since they are away from home and will most likely incur expenses.<\/p>\n
To correct misconception on the $15,000 cap, the amount only covers recipients of the Full Scholarship grant who were earlier enjoying the best offer for their education.<\/p>\n
“The impression that the public had was that everyone will be eligible of the $15,000. Unfortunately, this is only for the Full Scholarship,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scholarship board member Roman Benavente asked Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio to suspend the two statutory scholarships and instead equitably distribute the identified funding to all qualified students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}