During these cash-strapped times, 21-year-old Jasmine Burke feels like she’s in a race to get her bachelor’s degree in health education.
The junior at Georgia Southern University said becoming a grownup is calling her by name. But no one in her family has the means to help pay for her education.
“I decided not to take summer classes because I couldn’t afford it,” Burke said. She expected that she could apply for a Pell Grant, but she learned from her financial aid officer that full-time students who used the free federal funding during the fall and spring semesters could not tap into that resource during the summer terms.
Obtaining a Pell Grant this summer was out of the question.
“It was disappointing. I wanna graduate so I can get into the job field. The summer classes are expensive,” Burke said. “I only needed one class, and it cost almost $500 … to pay for that out of pocket for the science course I wanted to take; if I bought books, it would be about $800. I’ve already borrowed enough.”
“It was out of my reach,” Burke said at a bus stop on her way home from her summer job in Savannah.
Before she left the Statesboro campus, Burke sat down with a financial aid officer and concluded that these were her options. “They were saying there were loans I could take out. I already have so many loans already. I don’t want to take out the extra loan money.’’
