Goals The University is committed to ensuring that financial concerns are not a barrier to eligible students choosing to attend the University. To achieve this goal, UC has implemented a systemwide financial aid program that describes how families can finance a UC education, assesses the level of financial aid needed for students, determines how undergraduate financial aid is allocated across campuses, and guides campus awards to individual students.

Measures UC monitors the impact of its pricing decisions and its financial aid program with a variety of affordability indicators. For example, it routinely assesses the cost of attending UC for families at different income levels. UC also evaluates its success in meeting its financial accessibility goals by monitoring the enrollment of low-income and middle-income students and students' work and borrowing levels.

In addition to these measures, this section provides information on the affordability of a UC undergraduate education compared to UC's peer institutions. In most instances, the University's standard eight public and private comparison institutions were used for comparison affordability indicators. In cases where data were not available for these institutions (e.g., student work hours by income level), comparisons were derived from data provided by the 2004 edition of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) for highly selective public and private research universities nationwide. More recent information from the 2008 edition of NPSAS will become available by late 2009.

Prospective students and parents may find more information about UC costs and financial aid, including links to financial aid estimators provided by each campus, at the web page Paying for UC. Detailed information about trends in UC financial aid can also be found in the University's Annual Report on Student Financial Support (pdf).