In a room of college and university presidents recently, there was only one topic: what would the impact of Illinois' failed budget process be on higher education?
More specifically, what about the $373 million Monetary Award Program (MAP), which provides need-based tuition assistance to 130,000 students in the state?
Without a state budget for the current fiscal year, no MAP grants reached campuses for the fall semester and they seem unlikely to arrive this spring. In fact, the Illinois treasurer has recently said that we ought not expect a budget until November.
Among the group of college leaders, we each spoke about institutional impact, for the dollars that come from MAP to our institutions are not irrelevant to our ability to serve both those individuals and fulfill our missions more broadly. The absence of MAP exacerbated the anxiety in the room, because each school anticipated a significant budgetary shortfall as a result.
But there is much more to the story than simply not receiving dollars. How, we debated, will we support students who had anticipated - and needed - those dollars to remain in school - to study, eat, live - for the 2015-2016 school year?
It is our most needy Illinois students whose lives will be most negatively affected. Indeed, they already have been. Annual MAP grant awards average about $2,700 and are pledged to students before the school year begins. But the money is only sent to schools if it's appropriated by the legislature and approved by the governor - a process locked in impasse these last six months.
Illinois colleges put up $168 million of their own money to keep students in classes in the fall, but in a recent survey, nearly half report they can't do it again this spring. Students are finding their grants are suspended, or have been asked to return dollars already awarded.
At a tiny institution like Shimer College, I know these students. We have been unable to front them the money that they expected for either fall or spring semester - money that they intended to use for rent and other living expenses. Just as the stories are exhilarating when MAP grants make a difference that allows low-income students to get a college education, this year's stories are painful. No college student ought to be struggling to eat nor ought any be unstably housed.
Without MAP grants, these students must find alternative funds in the form of expensive student loans or drop out entirely. The Wall Street Journal reports that at Southern Illinois University System more than 1,000 students have already failed to return for a second semester. They are not alone. Some institutions are edging close to being unable to operate as a result of the state's budgetary crisis. Fronting the dollars may seem like the moral and responsible thing to do, but putting the institution at risk to order to do so pits the welfare of some Illinois students against the welfare of others.
The budget crisis is bad news for all of us in Illinois, but failure to invest in our most underserved students threatens not just those students, but also the schools they attend and, indeed, the future of our state economy.