Tuition at City College remains free under the proposal. But the cash grants — separate from tuition waivers — are what many students use to pay for rent, food, and transportation while enrolled. Faculty and students have warned that cutting the grants could price out the very students the free-tuition policy was designed to attract.

The program has functioned as a retention tool as much as a recruitment one. A student who can't cover basic expenses is unlikely to stay enrolled, regardless of whether tuition is zero. That's the gap the grant program was built to address, and it's the gap that would reopen if the cuts hold.

The Lurie administration has not yet detailed which specific line items offset the grant elimination or what the total savings figure is. The mayor's office has framed the broader budget as a response to a structural deficit that has grown across multiple fiscal years.

City College has faced its own financial instability in recent years — accreditation threats, enrollment drops, layoffs — making external student support programs more critical to its recovery, not less. Advocates for the college have argued that state and local aid to students is one of the few levers that has reliably moved enrollment numbers.

The budget now heads to the Board of Supervisors for review. The Board's budget committee will hold public hearings this spring before a final vote ahead of the June 1 deadline. That's the next moment where the cash grant line could be restored, restructured, or lost for good.