SPRINGFIELD -- A bipartisan budget plan for higher education, negotiated in the House, would make only nominal cuts to public higher education in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The proposal is expected to be voted on in the House Appropriations-Higher Education Committee on Friday morning.

Unlike more severe cuts under discussion in the Illinois Senate, the House proposal calls for no cut in funding for community colleges, a 1.03 percent reduction for four-year public universities, and an increase in funding for Monetary Award Program tuition assistance for most students.

The biggest cut, according to state Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, would be in funding for MAP grants to students in for-profit, proprietary schools such as the University of Phoenix, the Culinary Institute of Chicago and DeVry University.

Over in the Senate, opposition to proposed cuts in other state programs and agencies was so strong that senators haven't even considered their suggested higher-education cuts 3 percent to public universities and 10 percent to community colleges.

The Senate voted on some budget cuts Wednesday but failed to resume the process Thursday. Sen. Mike Frerichs, D-Champaign, said the upper chamber probably would defer further budget votes until next week.

"It was a contentious issue in our caucus," Frerichs admitted. "I had concerns about cuts to higher education, which has been taking cuts for the greater part of the last decade already. But also there was a big concern about the disproportionality of the cuts between the public universities and the community colleges.

"I like what I have seen out of the House in terms of their approach to higher education funding rather than the Senate."

Tom Hardy, a spokesman for the University of Illinois, said the university appreciated "the recognition of the importance of public universities and community colleges, and the need to protect the state's historic investment in its public higher education infrastructure.

"The legislative session has several weeks remaining, and we will continue to work closely with elected officials and staff on matters critical to the continued excellence of the university."

Rose said the higher education budget proposal out of the House was a product of teamwork between Democrats and Republicans.

"This was a real cooperative effort, led by the members who represent the downstate universities on both sides of the aisle," Rose said. "We all held firm. And as you can see from the Senate version, for Round One of this budget negotiation, this is fair and balanced, with an important policy statement, saying that we should not be paying for for-profit schools."

MAP grants to students attending for-profit schools will be cut by $25 million, Rose said.

"That's how we kept the cut to the four-years (universities) little. The alternative to cutting the for-profit MAP line was to more than double the size of the cuts to the universities. When you look at the Senate version a 3 percent cut to the four-year schools that's the point."

He and state Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, D-Urbana, stressed the bipartisan work.

"The Republicans stood with Naomi, Rep. (Daniel) Biss and Rep. (Daniel) Beiser, and said, 'We should not be funding for-profit schools and force a higher cut on public four-year institutions.' We all just stood together as a bipartisan coalition and said we're not going to do that," Rose said.

At one point, Jakobsson said, "it seemed like we were going to go back and re-discuss it and we said, 'No, that's enough. We thought we had a gentleman's agreement.'"

Both lawmakers said they believed the agreement would pass in committee and on the House floor, although lobbyists for the for-profit schools were said to be working legislators.

"We're putting more money into MAP for not-for-profit schools, for the public universities, for the community colleges," Rose said. "We're putting more money into MAP for kids from every district in the state. The community colleges are at zero (cuts). And every community college that hears about this is going to call their legislator and tell them to vote for it."

"And hopefully," added Jakobsson, "they'll also call their senators and say we want you to do what the House did."

Jakobsson and Rose said this spring's House budget plan, still considered a work in progress, is superior to more recent state budgets.

"The whole idea of the way we're approaching the budget this year is that people should get paid. Going in, they're going to know what to expect and to know that they're going to get paid in a timely fashion," Jakobsson said.

"If you take the House version," Rose said, "you will remedy the deficit so that you start the fiscal year with a truly balanced budget. You should be able to pay those accounts in a reasonable fashion. And if additional funds come in because we overshoot the revenue target, that money is allocated to paying those past bills."

Not all of the House higher education budget details were available Thursday, but these figures were known:

The University of Illinois would see a $7 million cut from the current year's appropriation, to $688.3 million. Eastern Illinois University in Charleston would be cut by $488,134, to $46.9 million.

Total MAP grant awards would increase by about $8 million, and more money would be available for Illinois Veterans Grants.

Universities would not lose control of their tuition income. Some lawmakers had threatened to return to the practice of requiring income fund money to go to Springfield first, then having it doled out to universities.

"We made two policy decisions, I think," Rose said. "There's a belief among the (Higher Education) committee members of both parties that community colleges are where it's at. They are responding to market need; they are producing good, high-paying jobs with benefits at a very low cost to the students and at a premium to what the taxpayers put in. The first thing that everyone agreed was that we're not cutting community colleges."

"The next policy statement was that in this environment, ISAC's decision to spend $25 million on for-profits is inexcusable when you're not paying your universities on time, when you're not funding the (Illinois Veterans Grants), when you're not paying your K-12 districts."