Student financial aid: Cal Grant Program: cost of attendance.

Added passage dates: Assembly passed August 26, 2026, Senate passed August 25, 2026

Added Governor's receipt line with blank date and time fields for the Private Secretary of the Governor to complete

Removed amendment history headers (Amended in Senate August 21, 2026; Amended in Assembly May 18, 2026; Amended in Assembly April 16, 2026) and the original introduction date of February 19, 2026

Reformatted the bill from a working draft with line numbers and page headers to the clean enrolled version format; removed the 'as amended' qualifier from the legislative counsel's digest

The bill header was updated to add 'AMENDED IN SENATE AUGUST 21, 2026' above the existing Assembly amendment date, reflecting the bill's progression through the Senate.

Page numbers throughout the document were changed from 97 to 96, and text lines were renumbered accordingly due to the pagination shift caused by the header change.

Fixed a duplicated word in the summary: 'an institution institution' changed to 'an institution'.

Cleaned up finding (g) which had garbled text combining 'nearly two-thirds' from an earlier report with the March 2026 report. The revised version now clearly attributes the 43 percent figure solely to the March 2026 report and removes the reference to Section 472 of the federal Higher Education Act from that finding.

Reworded finding (b) to fix awkward phrasing in the COA definition, changing 'what a student has to pay estimate of the total cost for a student to attend that college in a given year and includes for one academic year' to 'estimate of the total cost for a student to attend that college for one academic year.'

Fixed a duplicate word in Section 2(l)(4)(G): 'count towards toward' changed to 'count toward.'

Added a deadline requiring institutions to develop and implement a cost of attendance policy and adjustment process no later than the start of the 2027-28 academic year. The introduced version had no specific date.

Legislative finding (g) was updated to cite a new March 2026 report titled 'Transparency of Cost of Attendance Adjustment Processes Across California Public Colleges and Universities' instead of the October 2024 'College Costs Uncovered' report. The statistic changed from 'nearly two-thirds' of institutions not publishing COA adjustment policies to '43 percent, nearly one-half.'

Finding (a) was softened from 'California has made meaningful gains to expand financial aid programs' to 'California has made meaningful gains to expand toward the goal of expanding financial aid programs,' acknowledging the expansion is still ongoing rather than accomplished.

Finding (b) revised the description of Cost of Attendance from 'what a student has to pay to attend that college in a given year' to 'an estimate of the total cost for a student to attend that college in a given year and includes for one academic year,' adding the word 'estimate' and specifying 'one academic year.'

Section 69432.7(l)(1) reference was cleaned up from 'complies with paragraphs (2) to (4), (5), inclusive' to 'complies with paragraphs (2) to (5), inclusive.'

Minor grammatical fix: 'count towards' changed to 'count toward' in the satisfactory academic progress provisions.