By Minor Myers jr.
President
Illinois Wesleyan University

Budget pressures make policy. Sometimes they bring great wisdom. Other times they play havoc with a wise system already in place. Current discussions in Springfield threaten a 45 year record of success.

In 1957 the Illinois Higher Education Commission established the Monetary Award Program. These MAP awards, as generations of students have come to rely on them, have helped students and families in need realize the dream of a college education. By original design they support students directly, and that design grew out of a technology-rich state contemplating its own demographic needs in the era of Sputnik and the Civil Rights Movement. The MAP program was later matched by the Federal program now known as the Pell Grants, and the two programs together made, and make, it possible for families, white, black, urban, and rural, to afford the dream of a college education.

Legislators in 1957 sought to help the maximum number of students, and they opted to do it by supporting students wherever they chose to matriculate in Illinois. Support for students at private colleges was a conscious, cost-saving plan. It reduced enrollment pressure at the state universities and minimized the need for the state to fund new construction for the demographic boom then in the pipeline.

It worked. Students took, and have continued to take, their MAP help to public and private universities and now to community colleges as well. Forty five years later, the numbers may come as a surprise. For the fiscal year 2001 the Illinois State Student Assistance Commission reported 46,195 at the community colleges, 44,663 at the public universities, and 41,002 at the private, independent colleges and universities. But if one adds the 7,561 MAP students at private proprietary schools and independent hospital and nursing schools, there are more students in the independent sector than either the state universities or the community colleges.

These numbers mirror a further surprise. Most students go to public high schools. Comparatively few go to private secondary schools. At the college level the pattern is far different.  The Chronicle of Higher Education in its most recent count found 193,880 students at Illinois’s 12 public four year institutions, with a virtually equal 193,319 in the 85 independent four-year colleges and universities. The community colleges enrolled 339,642 in the state’s 48 public two-year institutions.

The policy mix of civil rights and Sputnik set a tone not lost 45 years later: first-generation students study technological frontiers whether they come from rural communities or inner cities. Overall, 47% of the minority students at the private colleges and universities had MAP grants last year, including 56% of the African American students, 52% of the Hispanics. The average family income, supporting a household of four, for MAP-eligible students at these private universities is less than $28,000.

National reports offer a measure of comparative success. In November 2000, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent research group, graded all 50 states on higher education opportunities, through categories covering participation and affordability. Illinois had the highest overall ranking among all the states and was the top performer in investing in financial aid for low- income students.

No one could deny Illinois has a budget problem, but some proposed solutions may generate still larger problems. One proposal, initially supported by the leadership of both houses and both parties, would cut state budgets by eliminating $200,000,000 in MAP support for all students going to private schools. If adopted, 41,000 Illinois students counting on the MAP program for fall would be suddenly dislocated. For families in need, the state’s maximum grant of $4, 968 could mean the difference of college or no college. 

Three misconceptions may be behind the proposal. The first is that the private colleges are wealthy enough to provide the financial aid the state does not. Nothing could be further from the truth, and for some the loss of a MAP-supported student enrollment may well be fatal. Colleges grow by decades, yet survive by years, and Illinois Wesleyan today is heir to the remnants of three other schools which failed financially over the past 140 years. Many Illinois private schools have the same lineage.

The second misconception is that families at private schools can afford to pick up the difference since they are wealthier. Two problems here. First, it is needy students who get MAP grants anywhere, and second, the last time comparisons were done (1995) the median family income for private college students was $46,863, while those at public flagship campuses was in fact higher, $51,231.

The third misconception may be that ending MAP availability for private college will really trim the state budget. At best it may transfer expenses from one line to another, carrying still more expensive implications with it. A family in need is a family in need, and if loss of a MAP causes a needy student to transfer to a public university, there may be no saving to the state at all. In fact, state costs may increase if increased state enrollment mandates greater institutional per capita support in other categories. Private enterprise now bears those costs on the private campuses.

Higher education in Illinois stands today on three firm bases: public, private, and community colleges. No one in the private sphere would suggest cutting MAP support to state university students, but the state could probably save more money by cutting the public MAP support, shifting students to the private campuses and at the same time cutting other per capita subsidies at public universities. That is not a suggestion, but it does reveal the value the public in general gets from the private colleges.

In 1999-2000 independent colleges and universities of America provided $7.8 billion from their own resources in financial assistance to provide for undergraduate education. Private resources are now equally restrained as endowments have fallen, but the Illinois private colleges still provide a subsidy for 40,000 students which does not rest so heavily on the state budget. In a time of financial difficulty, the private schools are supporting the state.

In sum, the package assembled in 1957 continues to work. Alumni, corporations, and foundations support the students in the state’s private colleges and universities in a manner comparable to the support which comes to public university students through the legislature and state revenue sources. In each case, private and public, the MAP program builds the state’s economy for families with economic need. As Larry Matejka, the Executive Director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, often puts it in the most succinct terms: "MAP doesn’t cost, it pays."