COLLEGIATE LICENSE PLATES NOW AVAILABLE By SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE H. RYAN

By the end of this month, Illinois passenger car and B-truck owners with new "collegiate" license plates will be cruising all over college campuses and towns. The drivers not only will be fans of college teams, but will be making significant and annual contributions to student scholarships and higher education in general.

"Collegiate" plates unveiled last month honoring the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are the first in this special series. The plates feature a blue and orange block "I" and the words "Fighting Illini" to the left of the registration numbers. On the deadline for this issue of the Illinois Municipal Review, the following plates also had been unveiled:

• The Loyola University of Chicago plate, featuring the maroon school crest logo,
• The Illinois State University plate, featuring the red and black ISU Redbirds logo,
• The Southern Illinois University plate, featuring the circular maroon SIU logo,
• The University of Illinois at Springfield plate, featuring the blue UIS "Capitol dome" logo,
• The Eastern Illinois University plate, featuring the silver and blue EIU Panther logo, and
• The Western Illinois University plate, featuring the purple and gold WIU logo.

The initial purchase price of new collegiate plates is $88, $40 higher than the standard fee for Illinois license plates. Of that extra fee, $25 will be deposited automatically into the State University Trust Fund for a public university or the University Grant Fund for a private not-for-profit university.

The annual renewal fee for these plates will be $75. Again, $25 from that fee will go into the appropriate scholarship fund.

The collegiate plate program is being introduced at a time when the cost of attending college is rising, but the amount of scholarship money available to students is not keeping pace.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1979 the cost of sending one child to a public university for a year - tuition and room and board - consumed an average of 9 percent of a family's income. In the last few years, the one-year cost of a public university has risen to 14 percent of a typical family's income.

In Illinois, the average cost of tuition at a public college, at $3,400, is 20 percent higher than the national average.

State support for scholarships, however, has not risen as fast. Because of competing spending pressures from other parts of the state budget, allocations for the major state scholarship program, the Illinois Monetary Awards, has remained relatively constant at around $100 million since 1990.

This amount has increased slightly in the last few years, but there still is not enough scholarship money to help all students who need it to get into college and stay in school.

Under the Collegiate License Plate program, 166 institutions of higher education in Illinois - both public and private - are eligible to take part.

In addition to the schools with plates already unveiled, nine schools have signed up for the program: Augustana College, Bradley University, Concordia University, DePaul University, Malcolm X College, Millikin University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University and U of I-Chicago. Signs of those plates will be unveiled at a later date.

Any Illinois resident can apply for collegiate plates. I urge interested motorists to join me in giving it "the old college try." Support the university of your choice by putting a set of collegiate plates on your passenger car or B-truck.

It is a great way to let people know you are part of the team. And it is a great way to support one of the nation's finest systems of higher education.

Anyone with questions about the Collegiate License Plate program may call the Secretary of State's office toll free at 1-800-252-8980. The complete list of "Collegiate" plates is available in seconds by clicking the "Motorist Services" area on the Secretary of State's World Wide Web site, the "Illinois Gateway." This leads to "A Guide to Illinois License Plates" where motorists also can find directions on how to apply for "Collegiate" plates and an on-line request form.

The Gateway's address is http:\\www.sos.state. il.us. •

November 1996 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 7