Last night, The News-Gazette reported that Parkland College’s board has voted to raise tuition by 11.74%. In addition to this, due to the state’s budget crisis, another $3.5 million will need to be cut from the college’s budget.
Parkland was promised $5 million from the state in appropriations and another $525,000 in MAP Grants from the State of Illinois, and has not received a penny, causing them to run at a $6 million deficit in 2016 if tuition raises and staff cuts are not implemented.
Those are the facts, now I’m going to step onto my soap box:
Governor Rauner, we realize the state is in dire financial straits. We realize cuts, in some way, shape or form are necessary. But education is simply not the way to do so.
Cutting MAP grants for students who rely on them for higher education is simply not the way to balance the budget. This is not the subset of the population that should be held hostage as a bargaining tactic. There has to be another way. Cutting from underprivileged kids, and forcing community colleges (which should, in theory, be an accessible community resource) is nothing short of disgusting. Universities and colleges are not profit centers; they are social services that should be valued, perhaps more than anything else. Holding kids who need these grants hostage is legitimately one of the most despicable things I can imagine a politician doing.
So please, on behalf of the hundreds laid off at EIU, Chicago State and WIU and the over 120,000 students who won’t be receiving their MAP grants this year, fuck off Governor Rauner.
Seriously.
Leave and never come back to central Illinois. You’ve done nothing but wrong to us.