The governor wants to pay for the funding increases in part by reducing state financial aid, known as Cal Grants, to students at private colleges. But that could backfire financially at UC and CSU, Boilard said, if many private college students transferred to public campuses so that they could keep a Cal Grant. Or, if the public campuses had no room, then students might avoid college altogether… Brown is proposing to allocate $9.4 billion to higher education, which would be 21 percent less than it got five years earlier, when the state provided $11.9 billion, the report says. As part of the plan, colleges and universities would get hammered unless voters approve Brown’s ballot initiative to raise revenue: a five-year income tax hike of up to 2 percent on people earning more than $250,000, and a half-cent sales tax increase. Failure to pass it would trigger cuts of $200 million each to UC and CSU, and nearly $300 million to community colleges.

Read full article [here].
by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: February 9th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.