The Illinois legislature passed the state budget in July of this year after having lacked a budget for over two years. Many schools, like Elgin Community College (ECC), and its’ student body rely on the funding provided by the state to further their education. Now with a budget in place the state has funding set aside for the programs that ECC offers.

The Monetary Award Program (MAP) is a grant program that provides Illinois students with money to cover the cost of tuition and fees for school. In the 2016-2017 academic year, 898 ECC students received funds from the MAP program. MAP is one program in which it relies on the funding provided by the state. The money used to fund these grants has been set aside by the state legislators in the budget but schools like ECC have yet to receive the funding they are promised.

“Now there is a budget that is approved and it does include the MAP grant and it includes a budgeted amount, but just because it’s in the budget doesn’t mean that they’re going to fund it,” said Mary Crowe, manager of the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office at ECC.

Although there is an established budget and funding set aside, there is still no guarantee that Illinois students will receive the money awarded to them through the MAP grant. If the state decides that it will not be providing the funding for the MAP grant for the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the ECC board of trustees can cover the cost but will have to approve an action to do so first which it had done during the last fiscal year.

If neither the board nor the state decides to cover the cost, then students would have to pay out of pocket for their tuition and fees. Fortunately, for most ECC students, the federal PELL grant is also available to them and covers tuition and fees cost as well.

The federal Pell Grant provides for financial assistant to students who need it to pay for college. Federal Pell Grants are particularly limited to students with financial need and those who have not earned their first bachelor’s degree.

“Most of the students who get MAP have enough funding to pay their tuition and fees with PELL,” said Crowe.

While students await the funding to be received to pay for their tuition, ECC also relies on state funding things like basic operating costs.

“The money received based on the credit hours generated by the college and used for operations which include faculty salaries and other program expenses, student support services, administration, and operation of the buildings,” said Sharon Konny, ECC Vice President of Business and Finance.

The money has again been set aside for ECC but only a portion of the amount has been received.

“We have received partial payment for two months of the 2018 appropriation, and are still waiting to receive payment for the 2017 appropriation,” said Konny.

The overall Illinois budget crisis has been resolved by the state legislators. However, in institutions like ECC the problems with state funding persist as the status for the funding is still uncertain.