A weekly update on issues from Illinois State Senator Gary Forby

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from hundreds of college students and their families about MAP grants. MAP stands for Monetary Award Program. The purpose of the program is to help people get their undergraduate degrees by helping pay for tuition. Children of working families and older Illinoisans who want to return to school can get up to $4,968 to help pay tuition at almost any Illinois college, community college, or university. The grants are completely need-based, but they aren’t just a handout. Most students who get MAP grants are already spending all of their savings, working part-time (or full-time) jobs, and taking out large loans. They also have to keep up a 2.0 GPA and graduate within 135 credit hours. They have to show a real commitment to earning their college degrees.

This year, MAP grants were put at risk. Because we faced the worst fiscal crisis I’ve ever seen, we gave the governor lots of freedom with the budget. For many state agencies, instead of telling him item-by-item what he had to spend, we gave him the ability to distribute funds as he saw fit. We also gave him a large discretionary fund—over $1 billion—to fill any gaping holes. The idea was to make sure he had the flexibility to stretch the State’s shrinking revenue as far as it could go. I would have thought that he’d put more than the bare minimum in an important program like MAP grants, but I was wrong. Instead, MAP grants got the minimum 50 percent funding that was guaranteed in the budget, and Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) chose to spend all of that money in the first semester. College students who rely on MAP grants were left high and dry for the second semester, and a lot of them were afraid they’d have to drop out. They couldn’t take out more loans, even if they wanted to graduate buried in debt and still facing a tough economy.

So, yesterday, the General Assembly voted to direct the governor to restore $205 million dollars to MAP grants from his discretionary fund. Illinois students should get the money they were promised when they decided to go to college this year. More than 2,500 students from my district will get the money they need to afford tuition, and the universities and colleges won’t lose the money they expected these students to pay. Losing MAP grant money and tuition from the students who dropped out would have cost local universities and colleges millions—millions they can’t afford to lose.

Of course, telling the governor to use some of his discretionary funds to fix this problem isn’t a long-term solution. This problem is going to come up again next year, if not for MAP grants, then for preschool, road repair or some other vital state service. Next year’s budget isn’t going to be any better than this year’s. In fact, it will probably be worse because the budget compromise worked out between the House and the governor put the state billions of dollars deeper into debt by borrowing. I did not vote for this because it isn’t responsible. Earlier this year, I supported a plan to cut spending and raise revenue. It did involve an income tax increase, but it also provided $700 million in property tax relief and expanded a number of exemptions and deductions that protect working families. It would have raised the money we needed to pay for MAP grants this year AND next year, without drastically cutting other programs that people desperately need. I will make passing a real, responsible budget that protects education and programs that help people get jobs my number one priority next year.