(a) (1) A Cal Grant Program award shall be based upon the financial need of the applicant, and shall not exceed the calculated financial need for any individual applicant. The minimum level of financial need of each applicant shall be determined by the commission pursuant to Section 69432.9. The commission may provide renewal awards.

(2) A student attending a nonpublic institution shall receive a renewal award for tuition or fees, or both, in an amount not to exceed the maximum allowable award amount that was in effect in the year in which the student first received a new award.

(b) A Cal Grant award authorized pursuant to this chapter shall be defined as a full-time equivalent grant. An award to a part-time student shall be a fraction of a full-time grant, as determined by the commission.

(c) (1) The commission shall prescribe the use of standardized student financial aid applications for California. These applications shall be simple in nature, and collect common data elements required by the federal government and those elements needed to meet the objectives of state-funded and institutional financial aid programs.

(2) The applications prescribed in paragraph (1) shall be utilized for the Cal Grant Program, all other programs funded by the state or a public institution of postsecondary education (except for the Financial Assistance Program of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges authorized by Chapter 1118 of the Statutes of 1987, for which a simplified application designed for that sole purpose may be used), and all federal programs administered by a public postsecondary education institution.

(3) Supplemental application information may be utilized if the information is essential to accomplishing the objectives of individual programs. All supplemental application information used for the purposes of commission-administered programs shall be subject to approval by the commission, and applications shall be identical for programs with similar objectives, as determined by the commission.

(4) Public postsecondary institutions are encouraged to use, but may decide whether to use, the standard applications for funds provided by private donors.

(5) The Legislature finds and declares that it is in the best interest of students that all postsecondary education institutions in California participating in federal and state-funded financial aid programs accept the standard applications prescribed by the commission.

(d) Nothing in this chapter shall prevent an individual public postsecondary institution from processing, with its own staff and fiscal resources, the standard financial aid applications specified in subdivision (c) for student aid programs for which it has legal responsibility.

(e) The commission may enter into contracts with a public agency or a private entity to improve the processing and distribution of grants, fellowships, and loans through the use of electronic networks and unified data bases.

(Added by Stats. 2000, Ch. 403, Sec. 4. Effective September 12, 2000.)