Illinois Monetary Award Programs have gone unfunded since July when the everlasting budget impasse began but one local college is providing relief for their students where the state has failed.
Monmouth College President Clarence Wyatt has announced the liberal arts school will not be holding students responsible for the amount of MAP they would have received for the 2016-17 school year.
They already had extended that lifeline for students for the current school year but Wyatt tells WGIL this latest extension is Monmouth’s way of telling students and families that school “stands with them”.
“I’m still relatively new to Illinois but people who have been long time observers of Illinois politics have said this has gone on far longer than even they would’ve anticipated,” Wyatt says.
Monmouth’s Vice President for Enrollment Management and Communications Trent Gilbert in a news release says that 550 Monmouth students are effected by MAP funding.
Gilbert says the state owes those students approximately $2.6 million.
President Wyatt says he understands the state’s financial woes and that changes need to come.
“But to me you don’t do it on the back of young people,” Wyatt says. “You don’t do it on the back of talented young people who are going to be the future of this state. You don’t renege on a promise that was made to those students.”
Wyatt is in his second year as Monmouth College President.
