“The Class of 2027 is the 5th class under the Illinois Commitment scholarship program that guarantees four years of free tuition to Illinois residents with a family income of less than $67,100; we expect about one in three of our new Illinois resident freshmen will be here thanks to Illinois Commitment.”
This is the paragraph that Chancellor Robert Jones dedicated to Illinois Commitment in his 2023 State of the University letter. Regarding an aid program that provides college for nearly a quarter of undergraduates, he summed it up in 52 words. So, I’m going to add a few.
“The Class of 2027 is the 5th class under the Illinois Commitment Scholarship Program, with the smallest cohort ever, down 25% since the program’s creation! Illinois Commitment guarantees four years of free tuition to Illinois residents with a family income of less than $67,100 — a number not to be confused with the median income of the state, despite that being the original promise! We expect about one in three of our new Illinois resident freshmen will be here thanks to Illinois Commitment — a statistic only made possible because we admit fewer and fewer in-state residents per year!”
I’d take my 97 to the Chancellor’s 52 if the campus wants a fully accurate State of the University.
Jokes aside, I write this as a warning: If we do not act as a collective, one of the most effective scholarship programs at this school will wither away.
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Created in 2019 by the University Board of Trustees and Gov. JB Pritzker, it stated an intended goal of providing free tuition to all Illinois residents with a family income lower than the median household income of the state.
Yet instead of tying the scholarship indirectly to the state median so it could “float” along with inflation, the program was enacted with a strict limit set at the state’s then-median of $61,000. Five years later, it has been adjusted once, to the current level of $67,100.
Today, the median income for a household in Illinois is $83,000. The board of trustees has had a bountiful time to feel the economic headwinds and adjust course. They have not.
The board of trustees has a moral imperative to raise the income limit to $83,000 immediately. It is a shockingly small ask as in my rough calculations, it could cost as little as $5 million per year. While that is significant, the University campus budget is around $300 million per year. On top of everything, none of that budget is currently spent on Illinois Commitment, as the program is mostly donor-funded.
More than anything, I call on Gov. JB Pritzker to be the leader of this push. If he wants to champion himself as the educational leader of the state — to pride his legacy on his own love of learning — he must be the first to join in my call.
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