Opinion: Cutting Cal Grants will cripple California's economy for generations - David P. Lopez, Mercury News

The proposed elimination will impact approximately 118,000 students whom the state would have assisted during the 2009-10 academic year. Locally, thousands of university students at The National Hispanic University, San Jose State University and Santa Clara University, as well as the region's community colleges, would be devastated by such an action. Yet cutting Cal Grants will eliminate just seven-tenths of 1 percent of our nearly $24 billion deficit. This small saving today will cost many times our current deficit in lost revenue over the working lives of the thousands of low- and middle-income students who will not go to college.