Grants for Women
School grants for women returning to education provide financial assistance to alleviate the cost of obtaining a college degree. Many women pass up the opportunity to attend college after completing high school for lots of reasons. Some women decide to get married, become moms whilst others choose to enter into employment to support their families financially. Eventually some women realize that they need return to school to improve their career prospects in order to sustain or increase their income but do not have the money to afford school fees on top of general living and housing costs. Fortunately, there are grants available for women to return to school that support single moms, adult and minority women, including grant money for women with low incomes and people with disabilities.
Sources of Funding for Women Returing to Education
Women age 35 or over from low-income households returning to school can receive grants worth $2,000 to obtain a degree. The Jeanette Ranking Foundation offers funding towards the cost of education to women who can demonstrate how an undergraduate degree will improve their overall lives and how this would benefit their community.
$1,000 to $5,000 in grant money is available to women pursuing a post-graduate degree in accountancy through the Educational Foundation for Women in Accounting. Women of all ages can apply for this money and it is not limited to specific types of students, so Hispanic and Latino, African American and other minority women can apply for the undergraduate accounting school grants program.
It is sometimes necessary to take time off work for personal reasons or due to having a baby. Often, many women upon retiring to work feel the need to improve their skills in order to keep up with new college graduates in the same area of expertise. Women in this situation could apply for a scholarship grant through the Possible Woman Foundation International, which offers between $2,000 and $4,000 in scholarships to help women re-enter to work with the skills they need to be successful.
If you have already obtained an undergraduate degree and wish to raise the bar, fellowships and grants for graduate school students are available specifically for women through the American Association of University Women. Awards ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 are available to graduate students returning to school to pursue specific courses of study for example; grants are available for studying information sciences, math, engineering and law to name a just a few.
Many awards focus on females studying degrees in information and statistical sciences, but there are also opportunities available to women studying in high-need areas. Grants for nursing school are obtainable from state governments; many women receive full-ride awards in return for working in a critical shortage health care institutions after graduating.
There are many options for women to receive assistance to pay for higher education tuition. The above are just a few examples of the more common grants that women can access to return to school.
If you come from a low-income background, completing a FAFSA application could qualify you for need-based grants for women such as the Pell grant providing you have not already obtained an undergraduate degree.