Thousands of Michigan students attending private colleges and universities are now scrambling to replace thousands of dollars in scholarship money axed Monday by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer vetoed the money as part of her high-stakes duel with legislative Republicans over the state's budget for this fiscal year.

"I'm pissed off," said Mike Collins, 52, of Novi. "Not that it was cut — but when it was cut. I've got two daughters going to school who are getting that money. We had planned on it and to yank it away after the school year starts is awful. Now we've got to come up with $5,000 more this year for them to go to school. We hadn't planned at all for that."

The Michigan Tuition Grant gives up to $2,400 per academic year to students attending one of about 30 private colleges in the state. It's widely used, available to both poor and middle class students. That money was wiped out by Whitmer's veto.

Whitmer also reduced the money available for private college students in the Michigan Competitive Scholarship from a maximum of $2,400 down to a max of $1,000. She did not cut the maximum for public college students.

Private college students can get one or the other of the scholarships.

The cuts were among $38 million in Whitmer's vetoes cut from the budget passed by the Legislature for higher education.

"We understand the value that the tuition grant program provides in supporting scholarships for students attending Michigan’s independent colleges and universities," Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown told the Free Press. "The governor does not relish having to make these vetoes, but the bottom line is that tough decisions had to be made across all the budgets, including higher education, in an effort to get the Legislature back to the table to negotiate a real budget that will move Michigan forward."

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However, state legislative leaders, in statements Tuesday, didn't sound like they were rushing back to make changes.

If the cuts stand, that's going to cause issues for those students who thought they were getting the money, Michigan's private college leaders said.

"The tuition grant is a critical part of structuring of how many of our students pay for school," Jeff Abernathy, president of Alma College in mid-Michigan told the Free Press. "We need it back."

At Alma, 793 of the school's 1,400 students used the scholarship last year to cover a little more than $1.8 million in tuition costs.

"Many students who don't qualify for federal financial aid qualify for this and use it," Abernathy said. "This is going to be a hardship."

The cut will take money from more than 1,000 students at the University of Detroit Mercy.

"Most of the Michigan residents enrolled in the university who have been covered by the Michigan Tuition Grant program have received $2,400 a year to help them afford college," the school said in a statement. "The current budget would cut this program entirely. In addition, the Michigan Competitive Scholarship, which was $2,400 per student annually, would be reduced to $1,000 per student.

"If the budgeted cut stands, it would impact 1,146 University of Detroit Mercy students, 46% of whom are first-generation college students. The impact to the university and its students could be more than $2 million."

At Hope College in west Michigan, the college had awarded about 500 of its students about $1.1 million of tuition grant scholarship money and about 500 students Michigan Competitive Scholarship money.

All told, the cuts will wipe out about $1.8 million to one-third of Hope's students, said Jill Nutt, Hope's director of financial aid.

The college hasn't made any decisions yet on how that money will be replaced, she said, but students "need to be prepared of the worse possible scenario" of having to come up with the money this fall.

That could mean additional student loans for students.

"Certainly, trading a grant for a loan isn't a good option," Nutt said.

Hope sends out its financial award letters earlier in the year, detailing what aid students are eligible to get. Those letters list the two grants cut this week, but because the letters routinely are sent before state budgets are completed, they do contain warnings that the money might not be approved. However, that's not happened before and those warnings are kind of a "boy crying wolf" scenario, Nutt said. At least until this year.

"This did seem to come out of nowhere," she said. "(Parents and students) should certainly be contacting their legislator to let them know about the impact of these cuts."

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj