If you're still waiting to apply for financial aid for college, you might want to get yourself in gear because the deadline is this coming Friday--making it the earliest cut-off for state aid ever. The Illinois Student Assistance Commission informed school administrators on Saturday that the deadline to receive grants from the state's Monetary Award Program is also on Friday. more ›

Sen. Dick Durbin is currently at battle with a new enemy: the for-profit college industry. For-profit schools are "attempting to stop new regulations that would withhold federal education loans and grants from its schools with high student debt and low student loan repayments," according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The universal complaint about for-profit schools is that too many students graduate with useless degrees and too much debt. In a new measure being referred to as "gainful employment," funding would stop to individual programs as two-thirds of for-profit school students do not pay down the principal on education loans and do not earn enough to do so. more ›

Earlier this year, lawmakers and Gov. Pat Quinn decided, in the midst of a state budget crisis, to cut funding for the MAP grants financial aid program, and fund only half of the $440 million program, just enough to get the quarter of Illinois' college students that rely on MAP through the first half of the school year. If lawmakers don't restore the funds during their fall session in Springfield this week, the 137,000 undergraduates could find their educations at risk. more ›

It’s getting harder out there for Illinois students who attend public universities. more ›