Photo: Chicago State University President Wayne Watson answers questions before a Legislative Audit Commission meeting at the Thompson Center Wednesday.Hundreds of Chicago State University students received state financial aid even though their grades were so low that they shouldn’t have been allowed to enroll at the university, according to testimony Wednesday at a state hearing.
The state audit commission hearing comes after the Tribune reported last month that the South Side public university intentionally allowed failing students to remain in school to boost its enrollment numbers.
Sen. Edward Maloney, D-Chicago, chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, revealed that 449 students during 2008-2009, who should have been dismissed for poor academic performance based on university policy, received state financial aid given to needy students.
Of those students, 106 had a grade point average of 0.0 and still received financial aid from the taxpayer-funded Monetary Award Program, known as MAP.
“This is a serious, serious situation that I really think has to be addressed,” Maloney said. “The fact that people were getting the money who were making no progress and keeping it from people who could have used it … is a tragedy.”
Every year, there are thousands more college students eligible for MAP funding than there is money available. The maximum MAP award is $4,968 a year.
Chicago State University president Wayne Watson, who took over in 2009, said the practice of allowing failing students to stay on the rolls began in 2007 as an intentional effort to boost enrollment figures and then continued without the knowledge of current campus leaders.
Chicago State has a policy that students with a grade-point average below 1.8 will be dismissed “for poor scholarship,” but records obtained by the Tribune show students were allowed to continue registering for classes with GPAs as low as 0.0. Students also can be dismissed with a cumulative GPA of below 2.0 after two semesters or more.
Watson acknowledged that enrollment and retention numbers were slightly inflated as a result and said he ended the practice as soon as he learned about it this past spring.
The university dismissed 298 students for poor academic performance at the end of the spring semester, the same time the Tribune began asking for the grade-point data. He said the university is now following its policy.
“We found it, we discontinued it, we took action for those individuals who were not in compliance,” Watson said.
During academic year 2008-2009, 2,941 Chicago State students received MAP funding and 449 — or about 15 percent — had GPAs below 2.0, according to figures Maloney received from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the state agency that administers the MAP program.
There were 78 students who had been at CSU for at least two years with GPAs of less than 2.0 during each year. Maloney did not have data for any other academic years.
“It’s really disturbing. It’s frustrating,” Maloney said after the hearing. “But I think (Watson) is serious about (improving) this.”
There are about 7,200 students at Chicago State, a taxpayer-funded school that serves mostly minority undergraduate and graduate students. It has for years grappled with widespread financial mismanagement, scathing audits and a failure to graduate students. Watson said it is taking time to fix the myriad problems.
Wednesday’s hearing before the legislative audit commission was called to review the university’s latest audit findings, and Maloney participated to ask about the enrollment irregularities and other issues.
He encouraged the university to do a better job recruiting high-performing students in the city and suburbs. He questioned whether students with ACT scores as low as 15 should be allowed to enroll.
The most recent state audit found 41 problems from July 2009 to June 2010, up from 13 the prior year, including a failure to send tuition bills to students during the Spring 2010 semester.
University officials detailed several changes they’ve made. There are now four internal auditors, up from one, and several more employees in charge of compliance. The university now electronically tracks purchases and contracts so there is more oversight and less possibility that procedures won’t be followed.
“Chicago State University does have in place the administrative and internal controls necessary to ensure that we are fiscally strong and fiscally sound,” said Glenn Meeks, the university’s vice president of administration and finance.
