Illinois colleges and universities have gone seven months with zero state funding – that includes funding of MAP grants that help poor students pay tuition.
Wednesday, some business and labor leaders joined students calling for lawmakers to resolve the budget stalemate. Mitch Dickey is student body president at the University of Illinois' Urbana campus. Dickey's a senior from Bourbonnaise, and he brought to the statehouse a variety of stakeholders -- business owners, labor leaders, and of course students -- to explain how having MAP grants yanked out from under students is affecting them all. After a solid hour of poignant stories and questions from the media, Dickey admitted there's only one thing he knows for sure.
The president of the Federation of Independent Colleges is calling the lack of funding for higher education in Illinois a "crisis."
Dave Tretter's organization represents about 60 private colleges that get no state funding other than MAP grants - the Monetary Award Program funds awarded to low-income students. With the state in its seventh month without a budget, many schools have told students they'll have to repay the portion of tuition the state failed to cover.
Tretter says students will turn to neighboring states.
"This is the best way to drive the talent immediately out of Illinois. Certainly, other states - Iowa, Missouri - are already ramping up their efforts to come after our best and brightest. So I think there is faith, still, and an expectation that the legislature and the governor won't let this happen."
What no one on the panel mentioned is that Illinois already ranks second highest in the nation for net out-migration of high school graduates to colleges in other states. And that was before lawmakers cut off all higher education funding.