MARIPOSA, Calif. – On a typical day, Aaron Newman can spend hours composing songs on his piano or tinkering with a 3D printer on the floor in a corner of his living room.
Three computer monitors sit on his desk to design and print everything from a small boat to miniature frogs. He has even printed parts to make a machine called a “pen plotter,” and can program it to draw anything he wants.
“This is what I’ve been working on the past two months I would say,” Aaron says as the pen plotter moves effortlessly across the blank page. He programmed it to draw a rose.
Aaron,17, from the Sierra Nevada town of Mariposa, graduated high school early when he was 16. He never really had an interest in college after high school because he says “I don't like the idea of going into long-term debt.”
But last fall, his dad, Marcus Newman, convinced him to start a class at Merced College and then apply for financial aid. Newman, a veteran who was injured while serving stateside, knew about a program that waives tuition at California public colleges or universities for the children of veterans with injuries that stem from their service.
It’s called the CalVet college fee waiver, and Newman thought Aaron was a shoe-in when he applied in December. The program waives tuition and fees for any student of a University of California, California State University, California Maritime Academy, or California Community College.
Children and spouses of disabled veterans may qualify for the fee waiver, depending on the rate of disability the veteran receives and in some cases, the age of the dependent or if the veteran has received a Medal of Honor.
But Aaron was rejected.
“It just kind of caught us off guard,” Newman says.
To qualify, Aaron needed to have an annual income that fell below the federal poverty line – about $16,000. But his part-time job working as a restaurant busser and cook actually bumped him over.
In the San Joaquin Valley, the number of veterans with a service-connected disability has increased in the last four years from about 28% to 45%. Yet, income thresholds allowed by colleges has been a common challenge in accessing college for many children of those same injured veterans.
Advocating for changes to fee waiver
Last year, Karla Seijas, a doctoral student at UC Merced, pushed for a California law that would help ease requirements on a portion of the 1935-era CalVet college fee waiver because, she says, the income issue is very common.
She said her own obstacles and barriers as a military spouse opened her eyes to the need to find solutions.
Seijas initially introduced several ideas to lawmakers, but realized some of them were seen as “too aggressive.” So she decided to focus on one portion of the veteran fee waiver: the income threshold for the children of disabled veterans.
With this narrower focus to the bill’s language, it made sense to lawmakers, she said.
Assemblymember Emeralda Soria, D-Merced, introduced the bill, which changed which income threshold was considered for students during admission, from the federal poverty standards to the state standard. That change now means children of injured veterans can earn more money — around $21,000 annually — and still qualify for the waiver.
Soria thinks this would greatly increase the number of students who were eligible for college, and quickly — within a year.
“Many college students, whether they're veteran dependents or not, have a part-time job,” Seijas says. “If they had a part-time job of 20 hours a week, they couldn't have used the fee waiver along with whatever income that they had.”
The bill AB 1745 was signed into law last year and went into effect in January.
“We wanted to make sure that the eligibility criteria related to income actually matched the state of California,” Assemblymember Soria says.
Newman says all of this now seems like a “no-brainer.” He used the example of how two drastically different economies one state can have from another when it comes to the cost of living.
“Living in California and living in Mississippi are two different universes,” he says.
Over the last four years, the state poverty line has been approximately $5,000 higher than the federal poverty line. With the new change, Aaron would successfully qualify for the waiver with his father’s income if he chose to apply to college again.
College more attainable for students
The changes to the fee waiver have Newman thinking he might have to convince his son to apply for college again.
Newman, himself, is a returning college student at Merced College. He thinks if his son went, too, it could help his future, and open his mind to other possibilities.
“Some of the brilliant people out there don't have college degrees if you can show just some amazing work that you've done. That's enough sometimes,” Newman says. “But for the vast majority of people getting a good degree from an OK school is going to be more realistic.”
Newman thinks at the very least, higher education could help his son meet people who could connect him to the future he wants, or improve his passion and skills.
Meanwhile, Aaron spends his days tinkering with his tools as he figures out his next step in life. He dreams of working for Space X, owning a business, or composing soundtracks for documentary films.
He’s not completely opposed to finding these networks on a college campus – as long as it doesn’t cost so much money.
At least now, if he does decide college is for him, he’ll have an easier chance of getting in.
