As the state’s budget impasse enters its eighth month, college students who relied on state grants to cover part of their tuition are being told they may have to come up with the cash themselves. That’s just the latest blow to a program whose mission hasn’t been fully-funded in years.
At the beginning of every year, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission meets in Chicago to decide how to distribute MAP grants — the Monetary Award Program funds that help low-income students pay for college.
Originally, the formula they come up with was a matter of dividing the dollars appropriated by lawmakers among the by the number of eligible students. By the year 2010, the number of eligible students routinely outpaced the appropriation, so commissioners began cutting off applications earlier every year.
This history was laid out in the agenda item that executive director Eric Zarnikow gave commission members last month.
DR: So normally in January, you come up with a formula for distributing MAP. That must've been a kind of interesting discussion, to come up with a way to distribute next year's MAP grants when you don't have this year's MAP grants.
Zarnikow: Yeah, that was definitely a challenge. What do you assume the budget will be? And at this point we don't know what will be in the proposed budget for FY17 and obviously we don't know what the final budget is for FY16.
DR: So you're basically pretending that everything is normal?
Zarnikow: From an operational perspective, our approach was, you know, we need to continue to operate the program. When the budget is passed, we're going to be expected to distribute the money as quickly as possible, and obviously for students who are going to be making decisions about going to school next fall, they will begin to get their financial aid packages this spring, so we need to work with the schools to provide to them information about MAP eligible students and what those students should expect as far as financial aid.
DR: So part of what you were deciding at this meeting was, you've got a reduction factor where you decide how much you reduce all the awards by, right? If there were no reduction factor, a MAP grant would equal $4,968? Is that right?
Zarnikow: The maximum MAP grant would be the $4,968.
DR: OK and when was the last time you could give anyone that?
Zarnikow: So the last time the full MAP award was provided was for fiscal year 2010.
DR: Was it originally supposed to cover ALL tuition and fees?
Zarnikow: So if you go back in time, even as recently as 2002, the MAP award covered tuition and fees at a public university or community college. So basically the goal of the program was access.
DR: I didn't realize until I read this [agenda item] how MAP had been continually underfunded or reduced even before we got to this year.
Zarnikow: Yeah, MAP has definitely suffered. So if we went back to 2002, we were able to serve everybody who was eligible for MAP, and the amount of the grant covered tuition and fees at a public university or community college. So if you fast-forward to today, we're not able to serve everybody who's eligible, and the amount of the award is less than half the cost of tuition and fees at a public community college, and about a third of the cost of tuition and fees at a public university.
DR: And the way you've limited the percent of people is you cut off the application date sooner. It's called a suspense date, right?
Zarnikow: That's correct.
DR: Does it do anything to your PELL grant if you don't get MAP?
Zarnikow: No, PELL is not impacted by MAP. I would say one of the things not that is important to keep in mind -- if the student isn't able to get enough resources together, including MAP to go, then the PELL dollars do not come into the state. So the vast majority of MAP recipients are also. PELL recipients. And you know, PELL dollars bring about 1.1 to 1.2 billion dollars into the state every year from the federal government. And that is all money that goes into communities where schools are.
Lawmakers recently passed a measure that would fund MAP, but Governor Bruce Rauner has promised to veto the legislation. He says the state lacks the money to pay for it.
