Illinois State University is planning to enroll students for the fall semester of 2016 who are due to receive state funding through the Monetary Award Program.
During GLT's Sound Ideas, President Larry Dietz said the university has no plans to block enrollment of about 4,000 students who pay for tuition, fees and other expenses through so-called MAP grants. MAP helps pay college expenses for low-income students. Traditionally, the state gives universities funds for MAP grants, but Illinois has had no state budget in place since last July, and separate attempts to fund MAP have proven fruitless.
"Depending on what the state does, by the fall semester will determine whether or not we need to collect that from the individual students. Right now we're planning on that not to be an inhibitor in terms of enrollment in the fall," Dietz said. In recent years, ISU has had to swallow the cost of MAP funding without state reimbursement.
Dietz said, if the state fails to provide funding by this fall, the university intends to cover those students, but he added, "we're not sure we can cover them without any sense of not being repaid either by the state or the students at some point."
The overall cost for MAP-eligible students to attend Illinois State is about $15 million annually.
