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Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

MAP Grant Uncertainty Leads Some Students To Change Plans

uis.edu

MAP grants — the monetary award program that helps low-income students pay college tuition — will receive some funding through the stopgap measure approved last week by Illinois lawmakers. But a new survey conducted by the agency that administers the MAP program shows the detrimental effects the state budget impasse has already had on those students’ enrollment decisions. 

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission  sent a survey to nearly 100,000 students who received MAP grants last fall. More than 10,000 responded, and most took time to answer the open-ended questions about how they were coping with the state’s failure to fund the promised financial aid. One in seven said they might not return to school this fall, or would have “extreme difficulty” doing so. If that same percentage holds true for all MAP students, it would mean 18,000 current students might not re-enroll next fall. 

Some said? they had no choice but to drop out. “I don’t have the funds to attend school anymore,” one student wrote. "I’m 5 classes from completing my degree.” 

The survey was taken before the state legislature agreed late last week to reimburse colleges for the spring’s MAP grants. But there’s still no MAP appropriation for the upcoming school year. 

After a long career in newspapers (Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Anchorage Daily News, Illinois Times), Dusty returned to school to get a master's degree in multimedia journalism. She began work as Education Desk reporter at NPR Illinois in September 2014.
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