Cal Grant cuts may keep some students away
By Ryan Groshong
A proposal to reduce the amount of Cal Grants available for undergraduates has some worried that low-income students in the incoming freshman class won't be able to afford tuition.
Last year, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed cutting Cal Grants by 44 percent. But because of lobbying efforts, including concerns voiced by a delegation from the university, the grants only received a 14-percent cut.
Grants are once again on the chopping block this year, with proposals to reduce the maximum amount of aid a student could receive from $8,322 to $7,449.
Cal Grants are need-based aid awards offered by the state that do not have to be repaid. The amount of Cal Grant money available to a student is proportional to the cost of tuition at the student's university.
Because of high tuition costs here, students are eligible for the maximum grant. Tuition is expected to rise by about 6.5 percent next year. [See related story, below.]
Roughly 13 percent of Santa Clara's 4,500 undergraduates receive Cal Grants. The proposed cuts would not affect students currently getting the grants, though they would affect roughly 150 members of the incoming freshman class, said Chas Mercurio, director of financial aid.
The program has not expanded to account for inflation over the past 10 years. Also, income ceilings for Cal Grant eligibility are being lowered, meaning that fewer students will be eligible recipients in the first place, according to Anthony Vigliotta, assistant director of financial aid.
"It has an impact on the students' ability to meet the cost of attendance," Mercurio said. "That's about $1,000; it's going to make a difference. They're either going to have to take out additional loans or work, or try to find other means to make up the difference."
According to Vigliotta, the university does not have the funds to make up for cuts in the Cal Grant program.
"We only have so much money. Since the cost of education comes up to around $40,000, even after we offer them a little bit of money and the federal government offers them a little bit of money, there's still usually a hole," he said.
Vigliotta, who will be traveling with students to Sacramento March 9 to lobby against the cuts, says reductions could have drastic effects for low-income students.
"Who's it going to affect? It's going to affect the students who work really hard, who are told from when they are really little, 'we don't have a lot of money right now, but if you work really hard in school it'll pay off in the end,' " he said.
One recipient, Alex Marquand-Willse, a senior history major, plans to pursue a teaching career after graduation.
For him, the Cal Grant was a necessity.
"Without it, I would not have been able to come to Santa Clara financially, my parents would have had to send me to another school, and this was the one school that I really wanted to come to," he said.
He worried that cuts in grant funding could negatively impact economic diversity here.
"One of the things I really like about Santa Clara is the diversity that students come from, all different areas of the country, all different backgrounds," he said. "If the student body is limited financially, you miss out on that experience."
Mercurio believes that because Cal Grants are funded by tax dollars, some critics support the cuts because they say the aid should be used for students attending state universities, rather than private schools, like Santa Clara.
Vigliotta, however, said that there aren't enough state schools to support all of California's students, and that cutting Cal Grants will further stretch state enrollment and limit students' ability to choose.
"We're just looking to talk to the state representatives to really put up a fight," Vigliotta said. "We understand that California has a lot of financial problems it's facing right now, but hurting the educational institutions, whether it's public or private, I don't think is the answer."
* Contact Ryan Groshong at (408) 554-4546 or at rgroshong@scu.edu.