About six thousand U of I students who were promised $500 Monetary Award Program grants will have to wait until at least next semester to get it. Director of financial aid Daniel Mann explains the holdup.

“A lot of the money that’s coming from this program is coming from the sale of the Isac Loan Portfolio, and they were hoping to have progress made on that here during the fall months. So we’re really kind of waiting to see what happens with that and make sure the funding’s actually going to be there before we make the actual awards. We’re now hearing that we’ll hopefully be able to make the awards in Spring.”

Mann says that while he hopes to get the awards granted as soon as possible, nothing will move forward unless they absolutely know that the money is there.