Gavin Newsom said this little-known program makes him ‘more proud … than anything’ else he’s done

October 2, 2022 — SF Chronicle

Gavin Newsom notched big legislative wins recently on abortion rights, housing construction and climate change policy. But Newsom is most proud of an-under-the-radar program that is just getting started: California’s College Corps program.

It pays low-income college students $10,000 annually in exchange for service-oriented jobs like tutoring under-served youth or working on climate change projects or distributing food to needy families. Begun as a pilot program last year, it is ramping up with 3,200 students on 46 campuses — roughly the size of the U.S. Peace Corps.

On Friday, when California’s chief service officer Josh Fryday swears in the first class of College Corps fellows, it will be another sign of how California experiments with new ideas long before the rest of the nation. No other state has a student debt-relief program of this scale that uses a privatepublic partnership to provide help for 600 different community organizations.