Textbook Stipends To Be Offered to Lower-Income Students In the Fall If Funding Can Be Secured

This fall, Harvard students from lower-income backgrounds may receive a stipend to cover the cost of purchasing textbooks if donors can be found to fund the Course-Cost Assistance Program (C-CAP).

The efforts to make C-CAP a reality have been spearheaded by Amadi P. Anene ’08 of the Undergraduate Council (UC) and Chaz M. Beasley ’08 of the Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) Campaign.

C-CAP would grant students with family incomes under $40,000 a $125 textbook stipend each semester. Students with family incomes between $40,000 and $60,000 would receive $75 each term from the program.

Anene has been working on the logistics of C-CAP this summer so that the program can be launched in the fall if funding is secured.

He said that $200,000 is needed to run the program for the 2006-2007 academic year and that he has been talking to individuals within the University, local businesses, and others affiliated with the College about donating to C-CAP.

The UC, with STOP’s co-sponsorship, passed a proposal in March urging Harvard to help lower-income students pay for course materials.

“We want to make sure, above all, that [the costs of textbooks] don’t act as an impediment to academic succes,” Beasley said at the time.

Director of Financial Aid Sally C. Donahue said that she was approached by Anene in the spring about the project and that her office would help administer the program if funding can be found for it.

“It’s an exciting initiative. I think they’ve managed to make quite a bit of progress,” Donahue said yesterday. “I’m certainly hopeful that [C-CAP] will happen, and it would be very exciting if it could.”

Donahue also said that students eligible for C-CAP stipends would not see their financial aid packages changed.

C-CAP “won’t affect [their] financial aid package, it will be in addition to the money awarded through financial aid,” she said.

—BRITTNEY L. MORASKI