NEW: California’s student financial aid agency is proposing a massive expansion of state grants for college students. If enacted, more than 300,000 students currently ineligible would be able to receive additional aid for community colleges. 1/x (many -- I'm going deep on this)
The agency, @castudentaid (CSAC), also proposes more than tripling the maximum award students could receive, from around $1,600 to $6,000. The recommendations, which will be discussed tomorrow at a public hearing, continue the state’s deep look at its financial aid programs 2/x 
that are already considered the most generous in the country. But critics of the state’s financial aid program, the Cal Grant, contend community college students end up paying more for the full cost of attending school than do four-year public students. 3/x
That’s because while tuition at community colleges is low, living expenses are similar to those of four-year students. State and institutional aid makes a bigger dent in the total cost of attendance for four-year public students than it does for community college students. 4/x
Two bills that came up short last year also sought to expand financial aid in the state (see: edsource.org/2020/californi…). The CSAC plan would do away with several restrictions on eligibility that currently block hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible students. 5/x
Those include gaps of greater than a year between finishing high school and entering college, plus age and GPA restrictions. The new CSAC plan, which lawmakers requested last fall, would end up costing the state an extra $1.1 billion to 1.6 billion a year. 6/x
The range rests in how students would qualify for the aid, called the access award. CSAC proposes removing current rules for state financial aid — income and asset levels of students and their families — and adopting the federal govt’s expected family contribution approach 7/x
Most community college students have an EFC of zero, with an average income of $14,337 (though CSAC says the range of incomes is from zero to more than $50,000). CSAC calculates that expanding the access award to $6,000 for all students with $0 EFC would cost $945m annually. 8/x
Expanding the access award to any student who currently is eligible for a partial Pell Grant — set at around $5,600 — is presently hard to calculate. If every such student got the maximum access award of $6,000, that would cost the state an additional $510 million. 9/x
That's on top of the $945 million for community college students with $0 EFC. It’s likely CSAC will propose to taper the award for students with an EFC below $5,600, with those who can contribute less receiving a greater share of the access award (similar to Pell grants). 10/x
The CSAC proposal also touches on Cal Grants for students attending public and private four-year universities. Like the community-college plan, this one would eliminate time out of high school and age requirements, plus set a lower GPA minimum of 2.0. 11/x
Another reform CSAC proposes is getting rid of a quirk around for decades that doesn’t give some students Cal Grant money to cover the cost of their tuition and fees in their first year of school. All those changes add up to an extra $295 million for the state. 12/x
CSAC also proposes that four-year schools use their own institutional aid to give students up to $6,000 if their expected family contribution is less than $8,346. The details on how that would look like are less clear, but the money wouldn’t come from the state necessarily. 13/x
Theoretically, if the CSAC plan expands the Cal grant to some first-year students who previously weren't eligible for it, that's money four-year universities don't have to spend in institutional aid. But the CSAC plan also ends state funding access grants for four-year unis, 14/x
which saves the state $185m in access awards for four-year students. The hearing tomorrow is at 1:00 pm in the State Capitol, Room 437. It’s being live-streamed here:
video.isilive.ca/csac/live.html
The agenda documents are here: csac.ca.gov/sites/main/fil… (see item 5 for details) 15/x
video.isilive.ca/csac/live.html
The agenda documents are here: csac.ca.gov/sites/main/fil… (see item 5 for details) 15/x
Both chambers of the Legislature and the Governor would have to approve the reforms. CSAC’s proposal is for the new plan to begin in the 2021-22 school year, so the plan — if funded — isn’t likely receive state dollars in the current budget year. 16/x
Still, some aspects could be phased in through the annual budget process that is underway now and lasts through June. 16/16
That last tweet was 17/17. There's a lot of detail in the plan that I couldn't get to. Dropping the time since high school and age restrictions are major changes and are consistent with advocates' calls to remove the fine print on financial aid. Still, this plan may not ... 18/x
go far enough for some advocates of free college. $6,000 is just a piece of the puzzle. It still requires students to accept Pell grants and work 10 or more hours a week to cover the full cost attendance (housing, food, etc). 19/x
Also important: About half of CA's 2.2 million comm. college students receive free tuition through a state waiver (no, not the recently passed promise program; I'm referring to the other, much larger promise grant). CA's comm college tuition is the nation's lowest (College Board)
Oh! And if you want an explainer on how is that community college students who have way lower tuition than UC or CSU students must pay more out of pocket for the total cost of attendance, read mine from 2018: edsource.org/2018/californi…
