Affordability

Though the rise in college student debt often has been blamed on rising tuition, a radical shift in student financial aid--from a system relying primarily on need-based grants to one dominated by loans--has been equally important. Numerous reports have highlighted the burdens faced by students who borrow large sums, but less is known about students who are averse to borrowing. For these students, the increasing prominence of loans could actually narrow their options and decrease their chances of attending and completing college. Given the increasingly important role of student loans...

Like Berkeley, the UC system as a whole is quickly running out of space to accommodate the next generation of Californians who will be reaching college age by mid-century. Even with the added capacity at UC Merced, the UC system will run out of space on existing campuses in the next decade. In the normal course of events, this would trigger planning for another new general campus. Yet at a time when the university is still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession, the wisdom of an expensive new general campus is questionable. The need now is to rebuild and reinvest in existing...

In February 1989, the University of California (UC) Regents authorized President David P. Gardner to plan up to three new campuses; the first of the three would be located in the San Joaquin Valley, a rapidly growing area of the state with the largest population fifty miles or more from a UC cam- pus. The campus was scheduled to open in 1998. Instead, UC Merced, the tenth UC campus, opened for instruction in September 2005, with 706 freshmen, 132 transfer students, and 37 graduate students, 13 of whom had begun study at...

In an environment of declining public funding and rising tuition rates, many public universities in the US are moving toward a “progressive tuition model” that attempts to invest approximately one-third of tuition income into institutional financial aid for lower-income and middle-class students. The objective is to mitigate the cost of rising tuition and keep college affordable. But is this model as currently formulated working? Utilizing data from the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Survey of undergraduates and other data sources, this study explores these issues by...