A proposal made by Gov. Jerry Brown in his May Revise could significantly decrease Cal Grant funding and leave some students without grant aid.
Brown’s recently published revised budget proposal — informally called the May Revise — proposes that eligibility for the Cal Grant be tied to eligibility for the Federal Pell Grant. Diana Fuentes-Michel, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, said the change could leave 37 percent of new financial aid recipients in 2013-14 with reduced or no Cal Grant aid.
Cal Grant A recipients currently receive full funding to cover systemwide tuition at the UC and CSU, and eligibility is not affected by whether the recipient also receives a Federal Pell Grant.
If the change is implemented, students would be awarded full or partial grant amounts based on GPA, financial eligibility and Pell Grant eligibility.
According to Judy Heiman, a principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office, of the 37 percent who would be affected by the shift, 6 percent would lose their Cal Grants and 31 percent would see their Cal Grant amount reduced.
A UC Office of the President report indicated that 6,613 students at UC Berkeley received Cal Grants A and B in the academic year 2010-11. In that year at the Berkeley campus alone, $67,723,879 in Cal Grants were awarded.
However, Heiman said the methodology change could be seen as more logical than the previous method of Cal Grant dispersal in which the entirety of student fees was covered for eligible Cal Grant recipients.
“That sort of system where you award all-or-nothing has problems, and this addresses that by essentially reducing the amount of grants so that the most needy students get full grants,” Heiman said.
Heiman said that while the change could address issues inherent in the current system, it could also lead to some students incurring more debt because of a lack of financial aid. She added that it could also lead to students being unprotected from fee increases because Cal Grant awards will not necessarily increase as fees go up.
The proposal precedes a meeting in July at which the UC Board of Regents will discuss the possibility of raising student fees by 6 percent.
UC spokesperson Dianne Klein said in an email that the withdrawal of some Cal Grants affect financial aid awards for many undergraduates even if their own awards were not decreased because the UC taps into all available funding sources when distributing aid.
“When the grant pool shrinks, a relatively small amount of belt tightening is required of all grant-eligible UC students,” Klein said.
Klein added that the UC will work toward counteracting the possible cut to the Cal Grant program and easing the impact on students who lose the grant.
“UC will spread the financial ‘pain’ around equally to other grant-eligible students so that the effects on those who lose Cal Grants are not so dramatic,” she said.
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I am a single mom and decided at 36 to go back to school to try and make a better life for my son and I. However because of the economy I also have my 60 and 59 year old parents living with us to make ends meet. If this is passed I will loose my grants that not only me but my family depend on to make it through school. I am due to graduate this October, without my grants I will not be finishing school just shy of 3 months of a 2 year degree. How can that be right? I saw start the cuts at the top not the bottom. Hit the pocket books of the people who are making these cuts to the hard working Americans who bust their butts to pay salaries of ridiculous amounts! This is where the cuts NEED to start! Not our Police and Firefighters, and now they are hitting students? How can they expect us Americans to improve to be proper citizens if they take away one of the things that help us do just that? If a president has finished his 4 years of service then why should we still pay them the salary for the rest of their lives? If I was to finish my duty at a job, do you think they will pay me for the rest of my life? NO!! Then there is payment only if while you bust your butt at you job you paid into a retirement, but once again you had to pay into it and it comes out of the paycheck you bust your butt to make. So stop paying for their salaries and watch how much the devicet will go down.
The congress and senate seem to think the answer is to hit the lower class and take away from them. That’s the answer for them. I think it is time we stand up and fight back. Tired of the lower class taking the hit for a government that can not manage our money the right way!!!!!!!
BOTTOM LINE IS DON’T TAKE AWAY MONEY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ARE BUSTING THEIR ASSES TO MAKE A LIFE FOR THEM AND THEIR FAMILIES!!! VOTE NO ON THE CAL GRANT CUTS!!!!!
SINCERELY,
A MOTHER WHO NEEDS IS TO COMPLETE MY SCHOOLING
why not cut dream act funding first ?
California should stop giving Cal Grants to students at for-profit diploma mills such as DeVry. Nonprofit private university students should get no more than what a UC student would get for tuition.
UC and CSU need to stop this absurd higher education model that grants free educations to students from families making below a certain income level and charges an unaffordable amount to a majority of potential UC students from families making above a certain income level, regardless of whether the student receives any financial assistance from his family, whatsoever, and go back to the prior system where UC/CSU funding was equally to state residents and the cost of a UC education was the same for all regardless of the level of income of the student’s family. UC/CSU costs should be at a level whereby a student can work his way through the university regardless of his families income/assets to which he has no legal rights or claims once 18 and without going deep into debt. This used to the paradigm for public universities in the US.
Redistribution is a bitch.