For more than a year, Illinois’s community colleges and public universities have been struggling to operate financially as legislators in the state have remained deadlocked over a state budget.
Last week Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, passed a short-term, "stop-gap" budget to offer some relief for the state’s institutions. The deal also repays colleges for grant money they distributed to students who participate in the state’s Monetary Award Program. But despite the infusion of some money, many of the colleges are cutting their budgets, raising tuition and looking at borrowing in an effort to stay afloat.
"It’s difficult because, with a stop-gap budget people breathed a sigh of relief and people think we got funded," said Terri Winfree, president of Prairie State College, in Chicago Heights. "It’s important for the world to know that we operate as lean as possible and we want to serve our students … when headlines say a stop-gap budget was passed and they put this high number out there … of that high number, the large majority of that is going to universities and not community colleges."
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/11/illinois-community-colleges-deal-budget-impasse