Aug. 25--Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced a University of Illinois at Chicago scholarship for a few hundred qualifying City Colleges graduates, a program that will leave students to find other ways to come up with thousands of dollars in tuition.
The UIC Star Scholar Award will cover $2,500 a year in tuition costs for two years. To qualify, students must receive an associate degree from City Colleges through the Star Scholar program, which covers tuition and fees for Chicago Public Schools graduates who maintained a 3.0 high school grade-point average.
In-state tuition for UIC is now nearly $17,000 per year, so students who earn the scholarships will need grants, financial aid and other sources for about $29,000 in tuition over the two years.
Asked about the limited nature of the financial help in his new program, Emanuel said students can avail themselves of other financial aid options to cover the remaining tuition cost.
"You've got Pell grants. You've got other types of awards. It's not limited to that," he said.
Emanuel heralded the new effort as a step in removing financial barriers to higher education for good students.
"You get the first two years for free, and the next two years are affordable, and an incredible way, a new Star Scholarship, a direct lineage from our high schools to our community colleges to our colleges," he said at UIC.
"Every dollar counts," Emanuel said.
UIC spokeswoman Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez said the university will pay for 250 of the scholarships through "a combination of resources, including funds from University Administration, private funds we expect to raise and institutional financial aid." The program will begin in fall 2017, when the first group of Star Scholar CPS grads is expected to graduate from City Colleges.
There are more than 800 students entering City Colleges this fall under the Star Scholar program. Emanuel said that if more than 250 students qualify to continue to UIC with the scholarship, "that will be a high-class problem."
Emanuel described the two years of free tuition at City Colleges as "equivalent of a $40,000 benefit," compared to tuition costs at other area universities, though two semesters as a full-time student at any of the community college campuses will cost $3,506 starting this fall under a new payment structure.
The mayor announced the UIC program weeks after City Colleges passed a budget that will raise tuition costs there for many part-time students. The move is meant to give students financial incentives to take heavier course loads and get their associate degrees more quickly. But 60 percent of students now in the system take fewer than 12 credits each semester, and those part-time students in many cases will face steep increases under the new tuition setup.
jebyrne@tribpub.com
