Valley College will offer grants up to $500 to students throughout the semester

Basics Needs and Technology grants will be provided for students who are in need of proper resources towards their academic success.

By Anthony Lopez, Staff Writer

Valley College’s basic needs and technology grants lends a helping hand by providing necessary resources for remote learning.

Valley will provide one time technology grants (up to $500) for students struggling to continue their studies due to financial instability. This grant’s purpose is strictly for students who are in need of a laptop or general hotspot.

According to the college's website, “Students can apply for these grants, along with a free laptop, by going to the SIS Student portal, Navigating to Key Links & Help Tile, and lastly proceeding to the Scholarship link to the Student Login button.”

There they will fill out a form listing a few questions based on their financial stability. Once the form is completed, an email will be sent to the student’s school email and there they will await confirmation if they have been given a laptop. The qualifications that need to be met for students to receive these benefits are the student’s home campus, amount of units enrolled in (a maximum of six), and they must demonstrate financial need.

There are a variety of grants known as “Basic Needs Grants” which come in many forms and are made available through Valley. Basic needs grants are intended to assist students with expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to the coronavirus (This can include eligible expenses under a student's cost of attendance, such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care and child care).

According to the Pew Research Center, “Around one-in-ten teens (12%) said they often or sometimes use public Wi-Fi to do schoolwork because they lack a home internet connection. Again, black and lower-income teens were more likely to do this. Roughly one-in-five black teens (21%) said they use public Wi-Fi to do schoolwork due to a lack of home internet connection, compared with 11% of white teens and 9% of Hispanic teens.”

With the COVID-19 virus in action, this pandemic has led to the massive closure of face-to-face activities of educational institutions in more than 190 countries in order to prevent the spread of the virus. According to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, “By mid-May 2020, more than 1.2 billion students at all levels of education worldwide had stopped having face-to-face classes.”

According to researchers from Penn State University and the University of Connecticut, students with low-socioeconomic status are struggling the most as they do not have the proper resources to support them with their academic work.

When asked about his opinion on limited resources due to universities being shut down, Nathan Brown — a professor of mathematics and leader of the research team at Penn State — stated, "As universities closed, many students entered resource-limited or stressful domestic situations that are not conducive to learning."