A college student’s biggest worry is how to pay for that education. The Monetary Award Program (MAP) previously helped out by giving a set amount of money to those who needed help, but since July 2015 Illinois has not set a budget; as a result, 125,000 low income college students no longer have financial aid from the state making them go into even more debt than before.
Colleges have the choice to either help the students pay for tuition or lose the students that cannot afford it. This has caused several public schools to close parts of their campuses and to decrease the amount of incoming students.
Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed a bill in early February this year that would have provided $397 million for MAP grants. His reasoning for this was that it would “explode the budget deficit, exacerbate the State’s cash flow crisis, and place further strain on social service providers and recipients who are already suffering from the State’s deficit spending.”
Although he says that there needs to be a solution to the funding, he continues to wait for a “Turnaround Agenda” to start working, while college students rally for needed funding in Springfield.