California Trends in Student Aid: 1990 to 1996 presents data on the amount and types of financial assistance available to help students pay tuition, room and board, and other costs of attending postsecondary institutions in the State of California. The model for this data collection and analysis is the College Board's annual Trends in Student Aid, which tracks student aid nationwide.
The primary objective of this report is to provide the most complete and comparable statistics available on student aid for all California postsecondary institutions: public, independent nonprofit, and independent for-profit. The years covered are 1990-91 to 1995-96. For the most part, the California data we present in this report mirror trends at the national level.
To put the aid trends in context, the study also reports on changes in undergraduate tuition, fees, cost of attendance, and family incomes of California residents. To assess whether college is becoming more or less affordable, one must look at all three indicators (costs, income, and available aid) together. And we report all of these data in both constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, as well as current dollars. The inflation adjustment promotes accurate interpretation of trends, controlling for the variable purchasing power of the dollar over time.
This report updates a previous study, Trends in Student Aid: California, which covered the years 1990-91 to 1993-94, a period of particularly rapid growth in student fees at the University of California (UC), the California State University (CSU), and the California Community Colleges (CCC). Fee increases have moderated in the two years that this report adds to the earlier study: 1994-95 and 1995-96. This report also places the fee changes in historical perspective by showing the pattern of fee increases back to the mid-1970s.
As in the earlier report, we conclude by identifying policy implications for state and higher education leaders. The overriding challenge to California policy makers is how to sustain access to postsecondary education for the state's growing and changing college-age population as well as for nontraditional, older students.
Direct aid is not the only type of government financial support to students. State and, to a lesser degree, federal and local appropriations allow institutions to charge less than the actual cost of providing instruction, thereby providing an invisible or indirect subsidy to all students. This report addresses only direct aid to students.
Other restrictions also apply to the data in this report. For instance, the report does not consistently separate assistance for graduate and undergraduate students, since the available data are not broken out this way for many sources and programs. In other cases, reliable, consistent information was not available for all sectors of California postsecondary education. For this reason, the following categories of student aid are not included in this report:
As noted two years ago in Trends in Student Aid: California, information on student aid in private, for-profit (or proprietary) schools is incomplete and remains so. However, the sources of financing for these schools is much less diverse than for nonprofit institutions. For-profit institutions of higher education rely almost exclusively on federal programs, with a small (and declining) amount of state assistance and, as far as we know, little if any institutional or private aid.
By contrast, the independent nonprofit sector awards substantial amounts of institutional aid to students. Unfortunately, data on such assistance is not detailed. The estimates in this report for institution-based aid in California's 100 independent nonprofit colleges and universities remain broad approximations, as they were in our report two years ago (and, in fact, as they are in our national Trends in Student Aid data series). As institution-based assistance continues to increase as a percent of available aid, "the collection of more complete, comparable data on student aid [at independent, nonprofit institutions] will be increasingly important."
Another limitation of the data collection is the lack of any reliable information on non-federal student or parent borrowing for higher education. "Alternative" college loan programs-not federally sponsored or guaranteed-appear to be on an upswing, but there are no systematic data on such programs. Nor do we know to what extent students and families use conventional consumer loans, credit cards, or home equity lines of credit to finance postsecondary expenses. In our national Trends in Student Aid survey, we do not attempt to estimate the volume of such residual borrowing, nor do we here.
The way we present information on federal loan programs here differs somewhat from our previous report, Trends in Student Aid: California. We now have unduplicated figures on the number of borrowers in all sectors, whereas two years ago we were missing such figures for the independent nonprofit institutions. In addition, this report reflects a major change in federal programs. In 1994-95, the U.S. Department of Education launched the Ford Direct Student Loan Program (FDSLP), in which students borrow directly from the federal government through the institutions that they attend. This program now competes with the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), in which students may choose-as in the past-to receive their loans from private lenders that are guaranteed by the government. Because we are interested primarily in tracking the volume of borrowing over time, not the particular mechanism by which students get their loans, this report for the most part combines data for FDSLP and FFELP.
We are also interested in capturing the changing proportions of subsidized and unsubsidized borrowing. Traditionally, most federal loans have been subsidized, meaning that the government pays the interest on them while borrowers are enrolled in college. Supplemental Loans for Students (SLS), now phased out, and the more recent Stafford Unsubsidized option do not provide such subsidy, which means that in-school interest charges are added to the borrower's total cost of each loan. A growing share of student loans are unsubsidized, both nationally and in California. Unsubsidized loans are available to all regardless of need; subsidized loans are need-tested.
The array of aid programs offered to California students is complex. In addition to federal programs such as Pell Grants and student loans, California residents may be eligible for one of many state programs. Some of these programs are generally available; that is, the student may use the aid to attend any postsecondary institution, public or private. The Cal Grant is the largest such program, and is divided into three categories: A, B, and C. Cal Grant A helps low- and middle-income students pay college tuition and fees, while Cal Grant B provides a living allowance and sometimes tuition and fees for very low-income, disadvantaged students. Cal Grant B differs from Cal Grant A in two ways: (a) its income qualifications are more restrictive; and (b) it places less reliance on grade point average. The focus of Cal Grant C is on tuition, fees, and supplies for students seeking a vocational education.
In addition to state-administered aid programs, California also funds institution-based aid for the public segments through line items in the state budget-general fund expenditures for all higher education. Designated as each segment's discretionary aid source, these funds are awarded as institution-based aid in the form of Board of Governors fee waivers/grants to public community college students, or state grants and fellowships to UC and CSU students.
The "Findings" section beginning on the next page includes figures as well as references to tables that appear at the back of the report. Detailed technical notes are included with the tables, which are followed by general notes and information about sources.
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