Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Students brace for the worst as cuts to state grants loom

Chi-Town:
The news that state officials have drastically cut financial aid for the coming school year has some college students thinking about taking on extra jobs to pay their tuition bills, while others say they may have to drop out.

Last week, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission cut Monetary Award Program grants to about 137,000 students in the state by more than half.

The big cut means students will get about 85 percent of their promised aid for the fall term. They will receive no aid at all in the spring unless the state legislature passes a budget with greater funding for the grant program.

Damian Wolak, the undergraduate student body president at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says he’s been the first person to tell many of his peers about the looming cuts.

“They feel as if the MAP grant is like an entitlement, that they got their letters in the mail and they think everything is coming and everything is well,” Wolak says.

But in fact, the 6,200 students at UIC slated to get the state grants this coming year will collectively receive just $10.2 million under the current state budget. That compares with $24.5 million in state funds handed out to a similar number of UIC students last year. For individual UIC students, the average grant would drop from $4,000 to about $1,600 for the year.
Anyone out there affected by these cuts as they seeks to attain their degrees?

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