Plan to eliminate UC tuition hike wins unanimous approval from Senate committee

By Jessica Calefati

SACRAMENTO — All the talk in recent weeks about how to fix the University of California’s money woes and stave off a tuition hike has been between Gov. Jerry Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano.

But the Legislature has plans of its own, and a proposal sponsored by the state Senate’s top Democrat won unanimous approval Wednesday from the Senate Higher Education Committee.

Senate Bill 15, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, and Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, would use an infusion of cash — $75 million each to UC and California State University — to stop the tuition increase and bring more students and classes to the state’s public universities.

“California is facing a crisis in higher education, and we must act now to head it off,” de Leon said at the hearing. “We must make higher education more accessible and more affordable for all students.”

Late last year, the UC Board of Regents approved a plan pitched by Napolitano to raise tuition by as much as 5 percent every year through 2019, despite warnings from Brown and legislative leaders to back off.

Brown responded in January by threatening to withhold a promised $120 million increase in funding for UC unless the tuition hike is eliminated, and he and Napolitano have been working to hash out a compromise ever since.

Napolitano previously called the Senate proposal a “promising first step,” and Steve Juarez, one of her deputies, said at Wednesday’s hearing that UC supports the framework of the bill and thinks the plan is “headed in the right direction.”

The measure’s biggest hurdle may be the opposition of Assembly Democrats to how it’s financed.

To help pay for the $342 million plan, the Senate has proposed abolishing the Middle Class Scholarship Program, which the Legislature approved in 2013 to help middle-income students hit hard by steep tuition increases during the Great Recession.

De Leon has said the program should be scrapped in favor of “graduation incentive grants” because it isn’t working as designed.

Earlier this year, the California Student Aid Commission reported to the Legislature that nearly one in 10 students who received Middle Class Scholarship grants had assets in excess of $250,000 — and more than 1,000 students had more than $1 million in the bank. That’s because students who apply for aid must meet an income test, but not an asset test.

“The commission suggests that the Legislature may wish to reconsider this feature of the program,” Hal Geiogue, the commission’s chairman, wrote in a letter to de Leon last month.

Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, has said she’s open to tweaking the program but will not support a bill that eliminates it.

“The Assembly is absolutely committed to letting the Middle Class Scholarship keep working, since it has already helped more than 75,000 California students, including middle income and lower income students that fall through the financial aid cracks at both CSU and UC,” Atkins said.

[Source]: San Jose Mercury News