AMMAN — A joint initiative by the Parliamentary Finance
Committee and the Education Committee has failed to raise its targeted goal of
JD35 million for the Student Support Fund, MP Taleb Sarayrah, head of the
Education Committee, announced on January 4.
اضافة اعلان
The fund, which falls under the umbrella of the
Ministry of Higher Education, aims to offer loans and grants to Jordanian university
students who cannot afford to continue their higher education. The committees’
goal was to raise an additional JD35 million to add to the fund’s existing pool
of JD49 million to help support the more than 71,000 applicants from Jordan’s
public universities, Sarayrah said. The existing funds “are simply not enough
to support the high demand,” he added.
The lawmaker attributed the failure to achieve the fundraising
goal primarily to the inefficient promotion of the cause, and invited the media
to play a role in promoting the initiative.
Initially, “we aimed to raise most of our funds through the
private sector, ... but unfortunately the support was not enough,” Sarayrah
said, adding that a lack of awareness of the cause rather than the Kingdom’s
economic climate played the biggest role.
The deputy was adamant that neither committee has given up
on raising the funds necessary for the initiative, and that efforts will be
undertaken to revive this cause in the coming weeks, primarily through better
publicity strategies. These strategies will be explored in more detail with the
Parliamentary Finance Committee.
The Student Support Fund aimed to extend financial support
to
Jordanian citizens enrolled in public universities.
Other essential factors in determining students’ eligibility
to receive aid include their grades, cumulative average, financial status, and
living conditions, as well as the provision of basic information on applicants’
family members.
All the fund’s eligibility requirements, and which grants
one can apply for, can be found in detail on the Ministry of Higher Education’s
Scholarship Directorate’s website.
The Student Support Fund has disbursed more than JD330,000
million in financial aid to university students since its establishment in
2004. More than 380,000 students have benefited to some degree from the fund,
according to a local news outlet.
According to Higher Education Ministry spokesperson Muhannad
Khatib, “there is currently no available data” for the number of students who
received financial support from the fund last year. “Data for 2021 will become
available in the coming months, hopefully.”
However, ministry data showed that 50,517 students received
monetary support from the fund, in the form of both loans and grants, in 2020.
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