Cal Grant Funding Cuts Rejected After Students, Faculty Protest In Sacramento

A controversial proposal from Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown to slash grant funding for private school students was defeated on Wednesday, after students and faculty rallied at the capitol building in Sacramento.

An Assembly subcommittee voted 4-0 to reject the cuts to Cal Grants, an income-based financial aid program, after hearing testimony from students. Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, a Democrat, said Brown would have to "find the cuts somewhere else. We're drawing a line."

In an effort to tackle California's $9.2 billion budget deficit, Brown proposed to chop $301.7 million from Cal Grants -- reducing the maximum grant from $9,708 to $5,472.

Cal Grants go to students coming from families making less than $50,000 a year. According to the California Student Aid Commission, Cal Grant recipients tend to be minorities. For students getting Cal Grants at the University of Redlands, for example, 51 percent are students of color.

Many people are worried the proposal would force students to drop out.

"To put this into perspective, such a cut would impact 23 percent of the undergraduate student body in our College of Arts & Sciences. We already provide more than $40 million in financial aid out of our annual budget to approximately 90 percent of these students and there is no more room in our budget to cover additional aid," James R. Appleton, president of the University of Redlands, told The Huffington Post.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state Department of Finance told the San Diego Union-Tribune they've seen "a dramatic increase over the last eight years" in the number of Cal Grant participants and the cost. "In 2004-5, it was $688 million," Palmer said. "In 2012-13, it will be approximately $1.6 billion."

"Without my Cal Grant, I wouldn't be able to afford Redlands," Victoria Baker, a student at the University of Redlands, said in a statement to The Huffington Post. Baker claimed without the grant, she would've had "to work at two or three jobs to support myself" on top of school.

The presidents of these private nonprofit colleges took to writing editorials in newspapers around California. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, came out against cuts to Cal Grants last month, saying the state was pricing students out of higher education.

"If we keep cutting higher education funding and increasing the cost of getting a degree," Newsom said, "students are guaranteed not to complete a degree because we have priced them out of public education and told them they are not worth our support."

Comments

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

12:28 AM on 03/10/2012

For several years now, the community colleges where I teach have reduced required core classes by sometimes more than 25% of available offerings, and even some smaller departments have been eliminated. For us adjunct profs, this spells cash flow disaster, but, more important, for students aspiring to study their way out of their current McJobs, reductions are dream-killing.

I read recently that almost 30% of all California CC profs are Republican. For those good folks, I ask the question: How can you claim GOP and witness what your party has done to higher education in our state? Republican legislators even worked to prevent citizens from voting on whether or not they preferred to raise taxes to pay for the "big three" of public services: law enforcement, education, and social welfare/healthcare.

[Jill1975]

07:50 PM on 03/12/2012

Gov Brown's tax proposal includes increases for the universities but unfortunately also includes increses in the already sky high salaries and benefits of public service and law enforement personnel. We spend too little money on the University of Calif and too much on mindless govt employee drones .

[Malcolm2809]

12:12 PM on 03/24/2013

I am not sure what you mean our community colleges and the CSU system is one of the lowest rated tuition higher education systems in the country.

[B Cayenne Bird]

03:05 PM on 03/09/2012

Thank you to everyone who helped us protest! Organizing does work! This is an important victory. Make the legislators release the 54,000 non-violent prisoners who are getting out anyway. This will save us billions of dollars. Jerry Brown knows this but he is so beholden the CCPOA Prison Guard's union that he would rather cut education and human services. Please support the campaign, Liberals to Recall Jerry Brown. http://www.facebook.com/LiberalsToRecallJerryBrown

[Callyson]

02:02 PM on 03/09/2012

"That is one large deficit. What are the dems going to do.."
-------
An answer, from the LA Times article on Governor Brown's good takedown of a Washington Times reporter:
Brown: I’ve reduced the deficit that was left to me by a Republican governor from $26 billion to $9 billion and I have a plan to reduce it to zero.
Reporter: So you’re saying that the reason that California is going bankrupt is...
Brown: No, that’s not true. We’re going far. I mean, we’re doing quite well.
Duran: You need to ask a question that’s based on the truth.
Brown (to Duran): You don’t have to argue with her…
Duran: No, S&P just upgraded to positive. That’s not bankrupt...
Duran: And your facts are totally wrong. I can prove it to you.
Brown: Because your incisiveness is kind of suspect. Anyway. California, the economy is doing better, it’s coming back. The private economy added $90 billion, and that feeds into the public sector as well. There are deficits because there’s been excesses in the last decade, brought on principally by the mortgage bubble and breakdown. And we’re now cleaning up after that mess. It does take a while to do that. I’d say we’re on a very positive course. Not as rapid as I would like, but the trajectory is all in the right direction.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/02/jerry-brown-takes-on-washington-times-reporter.html

[Cyberfox]

08:38 AM on 03/09/2012

These students have discovered that private colleges provide a much better college education than public ones.

[dbrett480]

10:56 PM on 03/08/2012

There is actually a simple solution to the college funding issue. The state government should eliminate all general education from UC and CSU schools, as this education can be received for cheaper at community colleges. Also the UC system should focus entirely on graduate education in law, medicine, sciences, technology, engineering. The CSU system should be entirely devoted to granting bachelor degrees once students complete their general education at a community college. There is no reason why the state should be wasting money on a freshman English student at a UC school.

[Cyberfox]

08:39 AM on 03/09/2012

The best way to do it is eliminate the grants altogether.

[grod805]

11:17 AM on 03/09/2012

Community college is easier than high school, a UC school will actually challenge you. Once you're at a community college, only a few actually transfer. I know so many people who are still at a community college, four years after graduating high school, that's very common. Many just give up and waste a bunch of tax payer money when they don't transfer or graduate.

[dbrett480]

11:53 AM on 03/09/2012

That is because people who are less than super motivated attend community college. If ALL college students had to attend, the community college would more closely resemble a CSU campus.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

12:19 AM on 03/10/2012

I am sorry, Grod, but your argument does not follow. If CC is so easy, why are there not more transferring to four-year institutions? Like a Michigan study revealed several years ago, about 50% of all CC freshmen do not survive into their sophomore years. Further, I teach my CC freshman comp courses in the same manner as I did at university level during my grad school programs.

Granted, a UC is far more challenging, but only because of the quality of students admitted, not necessarily because of academic rigor. I have taught summer school students who wanted to pick up courses while on university break who thought that CC classes would be less demanding, but who thought differently afterwards.....

[CITYTERRACE63]

07:21 PM on 03/08/2012

The state of California has plenty of money for education. It has $92.5 billion dollars to spend. Governor Brown has already cut 900 million out of welfare. Lets go the rest of the way and cut it off completely and use that money to fund education. California has 360000 state employees. Get rid of about 60,000 non law enforcement and non revenue generating ones and that will save more money. More cuts to Medi Cal are needed. Since the feds will not allow the freeloaders to make co payments then cut another 600-700 million from the program. Basicly what I am saying is restore all of the education cuts and offset that money with cuts to socialist programs like welfare Medi Cal and other programs for the freeloaders. VOTE NO ON ANY AND ALL TAX INCREASES IN NOVEMBER!!!!!!!

[Jill1975]

08:05 PM on 03/12/2012

We could probably get rid of half of state and local employees and not notice the difference. The remaining ones should have drastic cuts in their pensions.

[gsocratesasks]

02:50 PM on 03/08/2012

That is one large deficit. What are the dems going to do..

[grod805]

11:24 AM on 03/09/2012

I'm completely sick of comments like this. The Republican governor went in an eliminated a lot of taxes like the car license plate fee not caring that that would incur a deficit. The Republicans also voted for the expiration of a 1 cent sales tax, no one noticed that on their receipts but it would have been used for other important projects for the state.

All this time the Republicans are irresponsible by cutting taxes and increasing our deficit and then blaming the Democrats for spending and spending.

[Jerry Bourbon]

11:58 AM on 03/12/2012

The "Republican" Ugly Austrian eliminated the car tax? Wow! He did that by himself, without legislative approval?

Wow...

[econ1]

02:27 PM on 03/08/2012

"the state Department of Finance told the San Diego Union-Tribune they've seen "a dramatic increase over the last eight years" in the number of Cal Grant participants and the cost. "In 2004-5, it was $688 million," Palmer said. "In 2012-13, it will be approximately $1.6 billion.""

Well, a 130% increase in payments in less than 10 years seems pretty good. It is very hard for politicians to reduce programs...who would confront a child and say that they can't have more? So spending will always consume everything the state can raise...and more...until something breaks. It is just the way.

[Enron By the Sea]

12:49 PM on 03/08/2012

So all I read in this article is that Cal grants help minorities and disadvantaged people. I thought we were not arguing that point. The argument was about whether taxpayers of CA should provide Cal grants to attend PRIVATE colleges instead of PUBLIC only. Where is the supporting argument for that?

[Kirby Smith]

11:15 AM on 03/08/2012

America really has it backwards. Slash education to prevent tax hikes for the rich, then we wonder why we can't compete internationally.

[You are so wrong]

11:35 AM on 03/08/2012

The republicans think college will make you a snob... lol

[MrStat1]

04:01 PM on 03/08/2012

The Democrats run California.

[Jill1975]

08:03 PM on 03/12/2012

Mr Santorum merely suggested that not everyone has to go to college. I agree with him . If more people with 110 IQs would just go to trade school or just get a job there would be more money for the brightest students to attend top colleges and contribute to society.

[gsocratesasks]

02:48 PM on 03/08/2012

The states run the colleges..

[Kirby Smith]

03:08 PM on 03/08/2012

I'm aware of that. Some federal loan programs were also on the chopping block. This is a federal and state issue.