Letter to the Sacramento Bee Editor

We submitted this letter to the editor of the Sacramento Bee in response to a June 10, 2012 opinion piece:

In Sunday’s Bee, Student Aid Commission Chair Barry Keene cited our research on college affordability (“State can cut costs without harming aid for students“) but, unfortunately, misstated our findings and drew conclusions our research does not support. While many more community college students do need to be applying for federal financial aid, overall there is far less aid available for community college students than for students at other types of colleges in the state. The solution is to increase community college students’ access to financial aid, not scale it back by virtually eliminating their already limited access to Cal Grants as Keene has very troublingly suggested.

Lauren Asher President The Institute for College Access & Success