University students waiting for money from the MAP Plus grant program will have to wait a little longer.

The program was signed into law by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in July and is intended to provide grants of up to $500 to college sophomores, juniors and seniors from middle-income families.

The funding for the program was supposed to come from the sale of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission’s loan portfolio but the sale has yet to be completed.

Claude Walker, director of state relations for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, better known as ISAC, said the portfolio sale is moving forward on schedule and that the state hopes it will be completed by the end of the year.

Questions about the lack of funding are misguided, Walker said.

“It’s not really a matter of running out of funding,” he said.

According to an ISAC release e-mailed to the University, MAP Plus grants had been awarded to 71,000 students nationwide.

In the e-mail, ISAC requested that institutions “hold off on making any additional announcements to students whose FAFSA receipt date is September 19th and later.”

To prevent promising funding to more students than will actually receive it, ISAC placed students who filed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms after September 18 under a hold status.

Walker said students who filed after that date may or may not receive the grants.

He said that it is fair to assume that most students did submit their FAFSA form before that date.

“We are pretty sure that anybody who is eligible will get a MAP Plus grant,” Walker said. “That’s our goal.”

Colleges and institutions have two options for distributing MAP Plus grants to students.

The individual institution can provide the grants from its own funding to eligible students or they can wait until the state funding comes through, Walker said.

Dan Mann, director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, said the University has chosen the second option.

Students who have been awarded the grant will not be informed until ISAC’s loan portfolio is sold, he said.

“We have calculated that approximately 6,000 students would qualify, which at $500 per student is approximately $3 million,” Mann said. “That’s a lot of money that we don’t have in institutional funds.”

Mann said the problem is that students know the MAP Plus program exists and are hoping and expecting to receive the grants.

The financial aid office has been preparing to distribute the grants when the state funding comes through.

“We have our programs ready and can be ready to award and disperse funds as soon as funding is available from state,” Mann said. “Once the portfolio has been sold, we can get money out to students soon after that.”

Walker said that institutions who have already begun dispersing money to eligible students do not have to worry about eating the cost should the sale of the portfolio go wrong.

“The commission intends to find funding even if the loan portfolio is not sold,” he said. “We will definitely raise the money to pay for MAP Plus.”