"Stipend" is a fancy term in the world of academe for "money to live on." Lots of MD/PhD students that I know paid for a fair amount of beer with their stipend. The rest of us used federally-guaranteed loan money. Such funds, stipends or loan proceeds, also come in handy for things like rent, light, and heat.
It's kinda similar to the medical profession's insistence on using the Latin "Curriculum Vitae" for the far easier and better-understood French word, "resume."