Calif. College-Aid Expansion Mixes Merit With Need

By John Gehring

Under what is being billed in California as the most significant expansion of access to higher education since the GI Bill, high school students in the state with solid grades and financial need will receive full tuition to state colleges and almost $10,000 a year to attend private institutions in the state.

Bolstered by an economic boom that has left the trend-setting Golden State flush with a $12 billion budget surplus, state leaders have created a system that parts company with other aid programs nationally that have tended to benefit middle-class students rather than their poorer classmates. A bipartisan coalition of legislators assembled a student-aid package that at once establishes new merit-based scholarships while significantly increasing need- based college assistance.

The new law also creates the most generous student- aid system in the country, providing financial aid for more than 101,000 students next year at an estimated additional cost of $1 billion annually,...