Bill Guaranteeing Certain Illinois Students Admission To University Of Illinois Clears House

ILLINOIS — High performing students in Illinois should be guaranteed access to the University of Illinois, said a state lawmaker who got bipartisan support on a bill to create a program to do just that.

State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi, R-Elmhust, Tuesday said the top 10 percent of the state’s high school students should have guaranteed access to the U of I, but don’t. She passed House Bill 796 she said is a first step to that goal.

“Right now the University of Illinois doesn’t have to do anything for our top 10 percent of students, and they don’t have to do anything for our top community college students,” Mazzochi said. “This is asking them to at least start by creating some defined criteria where you as a student know that if you start to satisfy this criteria, you’re going to be eligible for guaranteed admission pathway for the University of Illinois.”

Some of that criteria would include at least 36 credit hours at a community college and a grade point average of 3.0.

“To me anything that is going to allow our students, partially students who are not necessarily from the well-off districts but from the districts the University of Illinois historically has not been recruiting from my goal is to try to make sure that students from every district of this state have an opportunity to go to the University of Illinois if they show they are good students,” Mazzochi said.

Mazzochi said she hopes this is the first step in guaranteeing all high-performing high school students in the state have guaranteed admittance to the U of I.

The measure passed nearly unanimously with one person voting present. It can now be taken up by the Illinois Senate.

By Greg Bishop

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