Cal Grants in Jeopardy May 27, 2009
Posted by jayejfenderson in Articles.Tags: Cal Grants, California budget crisis, California State University, Schwarzenegger, University of California
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Gov. Schwarzenegger’s latest budget cut proposal for California includes terminating all new Cal Grants and taking $750 million for the UC and Cal State systems. This is devasting news for low-income and first generation students trying to make it to college.
Here’s a summary of how the governor would cut $5.5 billion through June 2010:
– $750 million from the University of California and California State University systems, bringing the total reduction over two fiscal years to nearly $2 billion.
– $10.3 million – Eliminate all state general fund spending for UC Hastings College of Law.
– $173 million – Eliminate new Cal Grants.
– $70 million – Eliminate general fund support for state parks, potentially closing 80 percent of them.
– $247.8 million – Eliminate the Healthy Families program, which provides health care to nearly 1 million poor children.
– $1.3 billion – Eliminate the CalWorks program, which primarily helps unemployed single mothers find jobs.
– $809 million – Release nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offenders one year early, and reduce the Corrections Department’s contract work, rehabilitation and education programs.
As someone who made it through college because of CalGrants, this is very upsetting. For many low-income students, CalGrants are one of the only options that make going to college possible, and to remove this means that more and more students will either graduate with larger student debt, or opt not to attend at all. Neither is good for our economy or state.
[...] California students and educators are up in arms about our state’s educational crisis and the recently proposed cuts by the Governor, and we all have opinions about what should and shouldn’t be done to untangle [...]