By Christian Mignot
Daily Bruin Contributor
The University of California may face a $17 million cut to all
campus financial aid programs next year, reducing the amount each
student is allocated in grants, university officials said.
Talks of potential cuts followed the announcement of the
preliminary state budget in January and will remain uncertain until
Gov. Gray Davis signs it in July.
Ninety percent of the cut ““ or $15.3 million ““ will
occur in undergraduate student aid funds, according to Ronald
Johnson, director of financial aid for UCLA. The burden will
be split among all UC campuses, with UCLA shouldering the largest
share, he said.
The undergraduate university grants program may be hit hardest
by the reduction, with less money available to split between all
recipients. According to Johnson, individual university grants may
be reduced by up to $490 per person.
“The prospect of a cut is not palatable, but we will use
all our resources to package students to meet their full
needs,” Johnson said.
“The situation will not keep a student from pursuing and
achieving educational goals,” he continued.
During the 1998-99 academic year, undergraduate student fees
were reduced while the amount of financial aid remained constant.
The budget that year allocated extra money to the UC system ““
money which the state government now expects the university to use
to patch the recent $17 million cut, as the state attempts to
restore balance to a budget in deficit.
The cut comes at a time when UCLA is experiencing a growth of
approximately 400 full-time students per year, said Tom Lifka,
assistant vice chancellor for Student Academic Services. With
encouragement from administration, students are graduating early,
so that the actual number of students on campus has grown slowly,
he said.
“Growth has not had a negative impact on individual
student’s financial aid packages by spreading available aid
to a greater number of students,” Lifka said.
He also said there is a high probability that financial aid
packages will offer less money next year than they have in recent
years when the economy was booming.
According to the Financial Aid Office, 21,000 UCLA students are
receiving aid this academic year.
Over the past five years, the amount of students receiving
financial aid has grown steadily, Johnson said. At the same time,
he said, there has been a recent decline in the amount of students
who rely solely on financial aid to attend college.
Nevertheless, a cut will place a strain on members of the
student body who are paying out of their own pockets for their
education.
“If the university grants me less money, I would most
likely have to work a job, which would take away time from school
work and extra-curricular activities,” said Dan Corman, a
first-year undeclared student. “It would be tougher for me to
get the kind of grades that I want, as I would have less time to
study.”
To compensate for the reduction in grant money, Johnson said
students will probably need to take on larger loans. Loans have
made up approximately 35 percent of student financial aid over the
last two years, and this figure will increase as the availability
of grant and scholarship money declines, he said.
Additionally, it looks certain that the state government will
increase the amount of money provided to UCLA for CalGrants in
2002-03, Johnson said. This could offset the problem, he said,
especially since UCLA students receive more CalGrant money than any
other public university in the state.