Financial Aid Awards Not Enough for Many California Students
By Eira Castillo
May 21, 2014
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - With the implementation of the new Middle Class Scholarship program, as well as the expansion of the Cal Grant programs, more students will be eligible for financial aid this upcoming school year.
Gov. Jerry Brown has allotted $1.5 billion in funds in his May budget revision for student aid, a 14 percent increase from his January proposal.
H.D Palmer, the spokesman for the California Department of Finance, says that the the budget shows Gov. Brown’s commitment to growing the budget for higher education.
The money will fund the new Middle Class Scholarship program, help grow the Cal Grant program, and also allow students to re-apply for a Cal Grant renewal if they have previously been denied because they exceeded the income limits.
However, The Legislative Analysts Office and the Assembly Subcommittee for Education Finance have found that the money awarded is below what students will be spending on books, resources, and housing. That leaves students without the money needed to cover many crucial expenses.
Judy Heiman, a CSU and financial aid analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office, says that this has been a problem her office has brought to attention before.
“Its great that the [student aid] programs are being expanded, but there are still a number of issues with those same programs that have not been addressed,” Heiman said. “The budget reflects a step in the right direction, but there is still much to do in making higher education more accessible in the state.”
Even new programs, like the Middle Class Scholarship, are already underfunded.
The Middle Class Scholarship was introduced last year and will be implemented this year. It will provide aid for families making up to $150,000 a year. These families were some of the ones that were hit the hardest during the recession, as tuition prices soared and no aid was available to them.
Recent estimates suggest that the number of enrolled and qualifying students in the program surpasses the amount allotted in the budget, and the Assembly Subcommittee for Education Finance has recommended that legislators increase the funding for the program by $20.7 million to fully fund the program in its first year.
The problems with financial aid funding are difficult today, but they are no where near as bad as they were when the entire budget suffered just a few years ago.
A lack in funding for financial aid hit hardest between 2010 and 2012. In 2012, the state funding for the Student Aid Commission was $700 million dollars, the lowest its been in the past seven years.
According to the California State University’s annual report, 76 percent of CSU students received financial aid during the 2012-2013 school year. The CSU also says that many undergraduates in CSU schools are heavily reliant on financial aid, both to cover tuition and living expenses.
Enrollment dropped at both the CSUs and UCs during those hard hit years, when tuition prices hiked and cuts to the budget forced stricter regulation and cuts to financial aid programs, like Cal Grants.
According to the Office of Institutional Research at Sacramento State University, the Sacramento campus is one of the CSUs with the highest number of students receiving financial aid.
At Sacramento State, enrollment dropped from 29, 241 in 2009 to 27,003 in 2010. Across the CSU system, enrollment plummeted by more than 20,000 students that same year.
Funding has gotten better recently for the CSUs than it was just a few years back, but there are still students who are being affected by programs not being able to provide enough money for necessary student expenses.
Bethsaida Ramos, a senior at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova, was accepted to Sacramento State and Humboldt State universities. However, she did not receive enough financial aid to cover her living expenses and her mom cannot afford to pay out-of-pocket for those expenses. She has opted instead to attend community college and transfer later.
“It really sucks , you know, because I worked hard for four years, but I still won’t get to go to a school I really wanted to go to. It sucks even more that it’s over something I can’t control,” Ramos said.
Democratic Assemblyman Matt Dababneh said that telling students who need more financial aid to get another job is not the solution, and that the state investing in financial aid and students will benefit California in the future.
“I can’t imagine a more worthy use of $9 million in our budget to make sure our most worthy students from low income backgrounds are given an opportunity to go to the school of their choice,” Dababneh said in a recent education finance hearing.
The Subcommittee for Education Finance has voted in favor of three recommendations that would: 1. raise the Cal Grant B stipend from $1,473 to $1,746; 2. Restore Cal Grants for students attending private universities; and 3. increase the number of competitive Cal Grants by 40,000.
Heiman says that the LAO approves of the subcommittee's recommendations on increasing funding for the various financial aid programs in the state, but warns that legislators must be cautious of only providing funding for one year, and not taking into account the growth of the programs in the future.
