A bus caravan of college students went to Springfield Thursday to lobby state legislators to restore funding for the Monetary Award Program for the spring semester.
A bus caravan of college students went to Springfield Thursday to lobby state legislators to restore funding for the Monetary Award Program for the spring semester. Due to budget cuts, funding for the 2010 spring semester was not allocated. As a result, roughly 137,000 students who depend on the MAP grant said they may have to transfer to a less expensive school, reduce their status to part-time or sit out the spring semester if alternate funding cannot be secured. “I don’t know what I am going to do but I know if there is no MAP I will not be returning to DePaul University where the annual cost is $25,000,” said Debra Smith, 22, a senior at DePaul. “It’s a shame, too, because I am in my last semester and now I may have to wait until the fall to graduate if I cannot come up with the money.” On Wednesday the Illinois House approved $205 million in new spending for MAP despite no clear way to fund it. Gov. Pat Quinn has been given the task of finding the money in the state’s current budget. In July Quinn approved a budget that reduced MAP funding by $220 million and students said they have been scrambling to find alternate resources since then. “I applied for three private loans but have been rejected three times,” said Carver Hampton, 19, a sophomore at Chicago State University. “Trying to get a loan from a bank is tough stuff because they look at your credit unlike loans from the federal government, which guarantees your loan regardless of credit problems.” This summer when the budget was approved legislators allocated $1.2 billion to be used at the governor’s discretion but he has since used that money to fund social services programs.
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