Speak Out to Save Cal Grants!

Governor Schwarzenegger's revised 2008-09 state budget proposal, announced yesterday, would unfortunately still eliminate all new Competitive Cal Grants. These grants provide needed funds that help high-achieving, low-income students cover a range of college costs.

Cutting this program would hit community college students hardest, eliminating 45 percent of all new Cal Grants for community college students. Community college students make up 73 percent of those who will be hurt by this cut.

Please contact your representatives in Sacramento, and urge them to save the Competitive Cal Grant.

Learn more about the cuts from our issue brief, "Proposed Cal Grant Cuts Would Hit Community College Students Hardest."

(Sent to our California email list on May 15, 2008)

Featured Work

Poll: Young Adults Say Higher Education is More Important but Less Affordable

A national bi-partisan survey of adults ages 18-34 reveals that young adults today believe a college education is more important than it was for their parents' generation, that it has become less affordable in the last five years, and that students are leaving school with too much debt.

Student Debt and the Class of 2010

College seniors who graduated in 2010 carried an average of $25,250 in student loan debt and also faced the highest unemployment levels for new college graduates in recent history at 9.1 percent.

Critical Choices

Our new report looks at promising and problematic practices of financial aid offices when students apply for private student loans.

Still Denied

Our new issue brief Still Denied: How Community Colleges Shortchange Students by Not Offering Federal Loans found that more than one million community college students were denied access federal student loans, the safest and most affordable way to borrow for college.

Adding It All Up

By the end of October, U.S. colleges must meet a federal requirement to create online "net price calculators." We took an early look at how colleges are approaching this requirement and found mixed results for how easy the calculators were to find, use, and understand. 

Student Debt and the Class of 2009

Our student debt report for the class of 2009 found college seniors carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt while unemployment climbed from 5.8% to 8.7% in 2009.

After the FAFSA

This report sheds light on what happens to federal financial aid applicants after they submit the FAFSA. Using 2007-08 financial aid data from 13 California community colleges, the Institute found that one in three likely Pell-eligible applicants did not receive a Pell Grant.