CSUN University News Clippings

Legislators hear pleas to fund college programs, financial aid

(June 2, 2009)

By Laurel Rosenhall

College students, faculty and administrators from up and down California blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s education budget proposals in a packed budget conference committee hearing Monday afternoon.

Their bottom line: The proposed cuts to California’s community colleges and universities will mean fewer students can attend, just as the economy is driving more people to seek education.

To help close the $24.3 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting payments to the California State University system by $481 million and to the University of California system by $800 million.

The governor has suggested $581 million in cuts to community colleges, mostly by trimming support programs for needy and disabled students and paying schools less for physical education classes than for other credit classes. And he has proposed phasing out the financial aid known as Cal Grants.

That would leave 118,000 high school seniors who were expecting Cal Grants to pay for their college education this fall without financial aid, said Diana Fuentes-Michel, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, which administers Cal Grants. And it would mean 83,000 students already in college would not receive as much scholarship money as they were expecting.

“If these students cannot afford to go to college this fall, they will face the worst job market in decades,” Fuentes-Michel said.

Community colleges Chancellor Jack Scott said enrollment at the state’s 110 community colleges hit a record-breaking 2.8 million students this year.

“This is the time when California community colleges are most needed, and it’s demonstrated by our enrollment,” he said.

Students are enrolling for job training, he said, or because they’ve been cut out of UC and CSU schools by their systems’ recent budget-enduced enrollment caps. Scott criticized the proposal to fund PE classes at the lower non-credit rate.

“We want the flexibility to determine our own curriculum,” he said.

The heads of UC and CSU also spoke about their desire to control the way the cuts affect their campuses. UC President Mark Yudof and CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said they would rather be hit with “unallocated” cuts than with reductions to specific programs.

That contradicted the advice from staff of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which suggested certain education programs deserve higher priority than others.

Steve Boilard, the LAO’s director of higher education, said undergraduate instruction should be the top priority for universities, even if it means cutting back on spending for research or professional schools. He suggested class size could increase at universities and faculty could be asked to teach more courses.

Boilard also suggested that community colleges should raise student fees. California’s community colleges charge $20 per credit – by far the lowest fees in the nation. If fees were increased, about two-thirds of students would never feel the impact because they would be reimbursed through federal tax credits, he said.

Students from dozens of community colleges spoke about how they’d been helped by support programs on their campuses. Teresa Schneider, who studies nursing at American River College, said when she started school she was “homeless and a burden to my community.”

“I now have a dream, and for the first time in my life I can see my place in society,” Schneider said.

Earlier in the day, the committee heard from speakers urging legislators to reject or soften parts or all of $6 billion in cuts to K-12 schools and community colleges the Schwarzenegger administration has proposed.

Several speakers urged the governor and lawmakers to consider tax hikes as part of the effort to close the budget gap.

Publication: Sacramento Bee