Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program would make California the first state in the recession-battered nation to eliminate student financial aid while raising college tuition, experts said this week.
"Other states are cutting back, but not a complete phase-out," said Haley Chitty, communications director for the National Assn. of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
The governor's proposal would end all new Cal Grants, eventually eliminating the state's main financial aid program for college students, and prevent existing awards from increasing. Grants awarded to 118,000 freshmen starting college in the fall would be canceled, as well as hikes in 82,255 continuing awards promised when the University of California and California State University raised fees this month by 10% and 9.3%, respectively.
At the University of California, among other options, students with university grants could see some of their money shifted to those who have lost Cal Grants, officials said. California State University and schools in the California Community Colleges System have yet to decide how to respond to the potentially devastating aid cuts, they said. The proposal would save an estimated $173 million in 2009-10 and $450 million in 2010-11, state officials said.
The Cal Grant program has existed in some form since the mid-1950s and was expanded in 2000 to cover virtually all low-income graduates of state high schools attending private or public two-year or four-year colleges or career institutes, officials said.
Higher education policy analysts rank the program among the best in the nation, both for its generosity -- top awards can cover full fees or tuition at public colleges -- and its focus on mainly low-income students in a state with an increasingly poor college-age population.
Until Schwarzenegger's plan was announced, it expected that 280,798 students would receive Cal Grants during the 2009-10 academic year.
"Why the poorest would take a double hit, I don't know," said Patrick M. Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "It makes no sense."
H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state's Department of Finance, said the governor took "no pleasure" in his plan and was open to other ideas. "We have been forced to put forward proposals that would have been unthinkable even a few short months ago," Palmer said.
