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news:
Alquist demands
return of $35 million to grant program
By Christine Shin
On-line Summer Forty-Niner
Assemblywoman Elaine
Alquist demanded the return of $35 million on Tuesday to the
newly expanded Cal Grant Program at a special hearing of the
Assembly Committee on Higher Education.
Governor Gray Davis
pulled the money from the new program because not enough qualified
high school students were utilizing the entitlement awards,
Alquist said. However the $35 million would serve well another
Cal Grant program, the Cal Grantcompetitive awards, which
has too many applicants and too few dollars to award.
Effective the 2001-2002
academic year, the new program was intended to be a $1.2 billion
expansion of financial aid for California residents who attend
public and private colleges and universities.
The expansion of
the Cal Grant program promised to forever change the ability
of low and low-middle income students to achieve their academic
goals. The number of recipients of the grants was projected
to increase by 30,000, according to the legislature.
"The bulk
of the new effort was to provide an entitlement grant to recent
high school graduates who meet academic and financial need
qualifications," Alquist wrote in a letter Sunday to
California Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg. "As a co-author
of this legislation, I was extremely proud to be a part of
the greatest expansion of financial aid that this country
has ever seen."
Ironically, the
number of awards has been reduced to 75,500 this year from
77,603 last year, according to numbers released by the Student
Aid Commission.
The grants were
guaranteed to all graduating high school seniors who met the
highest merit and financial need. With the 35 percent increase
in funds, the budget for Cal Grants was to award 102,829 students
with grants, but only 75,500 will receive them -- even with
a 20 percent increase in applications this year.
"This is a
shortage of 27,000 grants for our financially needy and highly
qualified students," Alquist said in her letter. "Immediate
action should be taken to return this funding to the students
that have earned it."
The Higher Education
Committee sought to re-allocate the funds from the entitlement
grants and shift them to the competitive Cal Grant programs,
in which students that have not recently graduated high school,
or did not excel in high school, still have limited financial
aid opportunities. A unanimous decision to send Alquist's
letter to the Budget Conference Committee was made at the
hearing on Tuesday.
The Cal Grant competitive
awards have 51,000 qualified applicants for 11,250 available
grants.
"This separate
grant category directly affects Cal State Long Beach and other
CSUs, as well as community colleges, where the average age
of students is 27 years old," said Paul Mitchell, principal
consultant of the Assembly on Higher Education.
However, CSULB
Director of Financial Aid Dean Kulju said that the situation
is actually much different here on campus than what is being
portrayed in Sacramento.
"As far as
new Cal Grant recipients, our numbers have almost doubled,"
Kulju said. "Last year, we had about 2,500 recipients.
This year, that number has doubled to about 4,400. Part of
the reason is attributed to the increase of interest in our
campus. More students with a heightened awareness of financial
aid are applying for admission. The Chancellor's office, University
Outreach and School Relations and high school presentations
are all getting the word out."
Still, Kulju is
supportive of the re-allocation of funds.
"We're hoping
for that increase in funds because it gives more opportunities
for students who are not qualified for other types of financial
aid," Kulju said. "Every little bit helps. Although
(CSULB) has had an increase in the number of students, who's
to say it shouldn't even have been twice that amount? Anything
that can get an eligible student to CSULB, we're in favor
of. It's hard to predict how many students out of 51,000 will
actually choose to attend our school but it's certainly going
to benefit us."
Wally Boeck, the
executive director of the California Student Aid Commission,
said on Tuesday that he supported the proposed re-allocation
of funds to other Cal Grant programs that have extraordinary
needs.
The Department
of Finance has been unwilling to shift funds to other needy
students during this budget year, according to the Higher
Education Committee's press release Tuesday.
"We need to
look into legislation that would allow the commission to roll
the unused portion of money into competitive grants, rather
than letting the money sit," Alquist said.
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