Governor Proposes Cal Grant Cuts Third Year in a Row
For the third year in a row, Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting a key component of the Cal Grant program. This is a cut that students and our state cannot afford. Just two days ago the governor said in his ‘State of the State’ speech, ‘We can no longer afford to cut higher education.’ Yet he now proposes to cut a critical source of higher education funding for high achieving, low-income students already struggling to keep college within reach.
The Governor would suspend all new competitive Cal Grants, which go to students who apply after the March 2 deadline, and/or graduated from high school more than a year before applying for a grant. There are already a limited number of these grants available, and demand for them jumped 42 percent in 2009-10, when 245,400 qualified applicants vied for just 22,500 competitive Cal Grants.
The San Jose Mercury News covered this issue in their weekend edition. Read the article here.