“Lower-income students … are able to many times, through our great programs in California, get help to pay for tuition. But they’re still graduating with a tremendous amount of debt,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento.

The plan, unveiled earlier this month, would cover not just tuition but living expenses as well, making it different from other similar proposals in states like New York.

“California is taking the boldest step in the nation for making college debt-free,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, said in a recent press conference.

The cost for the program would come at a price tag of $1.6 billion per year, phased in over five years, and would be paid for using money from the state’s General Fund, lawmakers say.

Proponents say existing tax revenues will cover the cost, but other projections to provide universal college came in at a much higher cost of $3.3 billion annually.

Some lawmakers are skeptical of the effectiveness of the plan, especially as California confronts a wide range of other issues like infrastructure and entitlement spending.

“I think it’s well intentioned,” Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez said of the plan. “But I don’t think it recognizes the economic reality or really addresses the challenges we have to address.”

Additionally, the plan comes at a time when the effectiveness of Cal State schools is being called into question due to poor graduation rates.

For example, under 20 percent of full-time CSU freshmen graduate in four years, much less than the 34 percent national average for public universities.

The “Degrees Not Debt” program would affect around 400,000 students at UC and Cal State institutions.

It’s just one of over a dozen student-aid related bills already proposed in Sacramento this year alone to offset the cost of college, as the average student loan debt per graduate in the Golden State is $22,191.

For example, Assembly Democrats last month pushed forward a plan that would grant in-state tuition for individuals in the state as refugees.

Currently, around 60 percent of Cal State students and about half of University of California and community college students already have their tuition fully covered by existing grants and aid programs.

Student aid and college reform has come into increasing focus, partly spurred by former Democratic Bernie Sanders’ push to make all at public universities tuition-free.

Meeting in San Francisco, the UC Board of Regents authorized a plan, which emerged from those negotiations, to allow the University of California to admit “5,000 more California undergraduates next year — and keep tuition flat,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The long-term funding plan will keep tuition at the level it was in fall 2011. Tuition will rise again in fall 2017 with increases pegged to inflation, about 3 percent. UC will also accept an additional 2,000 California students in fall 2017 and 3,000 more in fall 2018, for a total of 10,000 new students.”

Separately, Regents approved a scheme to expand UC Merced enrollment by around 50 percent. “UC Merced, a 10-year-old Central Valley campus built to meet the soaring demand for a UC education among Californians, will gradually expand its enrollment from roughly 6,700 to about 10,000 as the campus is expanded,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Competing priorities

Both parties to the talks had to make some compromises. Adding students increased costs that, Napolitano had complained, were already rising as a result of housing, health and administrative expenses. The UCs already draw some $3 billion from California’s coffers, according to the Chronicle, despite 28,500 out-of-state students paying about triple the tuition and fees of in-staters. Going forward, the paper added, “the state will pay $25 million to bring in-state enrollment to 180,000 next year, allowing UC to hire more faculty and increase student support services,” while “UC will reduce costs, including moving students more quickly through school.”

For the dramatic enrollment expansion, in fact, Brown had state legislators to thank. He and Napolitano “already had reached a tentative agreement to cover UC operations at its existing head count,” as the Sacramento Bee editorial board noted, “but state legislators wanted more California kids — particularly more black and brown kids — to get a shot at a UC diploma. And Napolitano’s negotiating tactics had made them mad. So they told her that if she starved spending enough to enroll an extra 5,000 freshmen and transfers in 2016, she’d get a $25 million bump, enough to reimburse UC for about half of the expansion.”

Shifting burdens

Sure enough, as the Mercury News noted, “lawmakers earmarked $25 million in the state budget for next year’s UC-wide expansion, a sum that university officials say will cover half of the cost. UC aims to cover the other half through increased private donations to the university’s operating fund and higher tuition for out-of-state students, among other sources.” In fact, out-of-staters will eventually lose financial aid altogether under the plan. The savings stemming from the elimination of out-of-state financial aid are a major source of the funds needed to accommodate enrollment growth,” the Daily Californian reported. “Projected savings from phasing out the financial aid program are $14 million, according to the budget proposal.”

In an email to the publication, UC spokesperson Dianne Klein said, “Providing financial aid to some out-of-state students is a ‘long-standing practice’ and that about 3,000 out-of-state undergraduates in the UC system received institutional financial aid in 2014-15. Approximately 900 of those undergraduates attended UC Berkeley.”

In what appeared to be an extra effort to ensure that increased enrollment would not be concentrated in already larger or relatively less-prestigious campuses, the deal ensured that “all nine UC campuses that educate undergraduates will enroll more California students,” according to a statement issued by the University of California. “Low-income students from outside the state who are enrolled will not be affected by the plan to phase out UC grants,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “but future students will no longer receive them.”

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has a long story up on its website about an unpublished Legislative Analyst’s Office analysis that pooh-poohs Assembly Speaker John Perez’s plan to help middle-class families afford college.

“A massive middle-class scholarship program in the proposed state budget ranked last among options for increasing college access in findings prepared, but not released publicly, by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“Pushed hard by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, the middle-class scholarship plan was approved by a joint legislative conference committee as part of a wide-ranging budget deal struck by legislative leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown.

“Affordability is Perez’s target – not the college access issue cited by the LAO, said John Vigna, Pérez’s spokesman.”

Gigantic, generous and mysteriously anonymous

Incredibly, inexplicably and in keeping with California media traditions, however, Sac Bee reporter Jim Sanders never even mentions the UC Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan program.

If you’ve never heard of it, than it must be stingy and tough to take advantage of, right? Wrong.

Who qualifies for the UC Blue + Gold Opportunity Plan?

“UC’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan will cover your educational and student services fees if you are a California resident whose family earns less than $80,000 a year and you qualify for financial aid — and that’s just for starters. Blue + Gold students with sufficient financial need can qualify for even more grant aid to help reduce the cost of attending.”

What it takes to be eligible

“Be a California resident or qualify for a nonresident tuition exemption under AB 540

“Demonstrate income below $80,000 with financial need, as determined for federal need-based aid program

“Be in your first four years as a UC undergraduate (first two for transfer students)

“Meet other campus basic requirements for UC grant aid (for example, be enrolled at least half-time during the academic year, meet campus academic progress standards, not be in default on student loans, etc.

“Submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or, if you’re an eligible non-citizen, aCalifornia Dream Act application by March 2.

“Make sure your school submits a GPA verification form to the Cal Grant program, or download the form, have your school fill it out and send it to the California Student Aid Commission

“Under the plan, your systemwide fees will be fully covered by scholarship or grant money if you are in your first four years at UC (two if you’re a transfer student).

“The plan combines all sources of scholarship and grant awards you receive (federal, state, UC and private) to count toward covering your fees. If, for example, you receive Pell and Cal Grants and private scholarships that don’t fully cover your fees, UC grant money will make up the difference.

“Students with greater financial need can qualify for even more grant support to help defray other educational expenses (like books, housing, transportation, etc.) In 2010-11, UC provided grant and scholarship assistance averaging $14,514 per student to more than half of undergraduates.”

Isn’t Blue & Gold’s existence newsworthy? Only to Reed and Asimov

This is a huge and generous program. If Perez wants to supplement it, shouldn’t the media, yunno, mention that it exists?

Well, no. As far as I know, the only people working for California daily newspapers who routinely mention the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan when writing about college affordability are me and Nanette Asimov of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Asimov had a story a few years back in which she told a student protesting over tuition hikes about the existence of the program and the student burst into tears. Oh, the humanity. Maybe if the media actually mentioned Blue and Gold every now and then, our students would be less fragile and self-pitying.