Published 2012-04-13T17:24:00Z”/>

Juniper Rose

Graduate students may not receive State University Grants for the 2012-2013 academic year depending on a decision California State University executives will make this week.

The CSU Chancellor’s Office asked the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office not to send out financial aid awards to graduate students, pending the executives’ decision to be made at meetings Wednesday and Thursday, said Dan Reed, the director of the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office.

While undergraduate and credential program students were provided with their financial aid awards last week, graduate students were not directly notified by the office as to why they did not receive their awards, Reed said.

There is, however, a notice on the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office’s website stating that graduate students will receive their financial aid award packages May 1.

In mid-March, the office was told not to package financial aid awards for master’s level students and to instead wait until the decision was made whether to award graduate students State University Grants, Reed said.

State University Grants are based on need and aid in paying tuition, and they are typically between $5,000 and $6,400 based on students’ expected family contribution, or EFC, according to the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office’s website.

One-third of fee increases in the CSU system goes toward the grants, Reed said.

Approximately 450 graduate students receive a State University Grant per year, with individual grants of up to $8,000 per year for full-time graduate students, said Kentiner David, the associate director at the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office.

Master’s students are also no longer eligible for subsidized loans from the federal government, David said. This will take effect July 1, and any loans that disburse after that date will be unsubsidized.

Subsidized loans are ones that do not start accruing interest until after a student graduates, he said

The amount of money graduate students can take out in loans has not changed, but graduate students used to be able to get $8,500 in subsidized loans and $12,500 in unsubsidized loans, David said. After July 1, graduate students will still be able to receive the total $20,500 in loans, but it will all be unsubsidized.

If graduate students don’t receive a State University Grant, they can take the equivalent amount out in a loan, Reed said.

“Students will simply have to borrow more to get their programs done,” Reed said. “I hope that we don’t end up with students not finishing programs because of it. That would be awful.” 

Jeff Bryant, a grant-dependent graduate student who has two more years in the anthropology graduate program, will have to take out about $13,000 in unsubsidized loans if the university grants are no longer available to him, Bryant said.

“If I didn’t have these grants I wouldn’t have been able to come here,” he said. “If SUGs were cut, it would serve as a block for anyone from a lower economic background to raise to the graduate level.”

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<strong>Juniper Rose can be reached at</strong>

<em>[email protected]</em>