The Campaign for Berkeley: Undergraduate Scholarships

If we want to continue to …

…we must increase scholarship support for our undergraduates.

Maintaining access to world-class public education

Berkeley is committed to maintaining its unique distinction of public access to world-class undergraduate education for all high-achieving students. For the greater part of the University’s history, undergraduate fees were affordable for most California students and their families. But in recent years, the paradigm has dramatically shifted.

• For most low- and middle-income students, the prospect of affording a Cal education has become daunting. State support and scholarship funding have not kept pace with increased education costs or California’s extremely high living expenses, resulting in rapidly escalating tuition and fees.
• Berkeley serves more students experiencing financial hardship than all of the Ivy League universities combined, yet these schools have far more scholarship funding to offer students, and the amount of aid they provide is increasing dramatically.
• About one-third of Berkeley’s 24,000 undergraduates come from families making less than $45,000 per year, yet Berkeley only has enough privately funded scholarships to help support about 2,500 of these meritorious students.

Increasing the amount of scholarships for low- and middle-income students is one of the best investments we can make in our country's future, and it is my top priority at Berkeley. - Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau

New investments in undergraduate scholarships can help change this dynamic by increasing the amount of support available to undergraduates, allowing the University to provide more talented students from all backgrounds with larger scholarships and enabling them to graduate with less debt.

Though the total cost to attend Berkeley seems low at $25,000, compared with $45,000 at academically comparable private universities, Berkeley is not able to provide its undergraduates with financial packages that are competitive with those of private universities. And the gulf is widening as the cost of higher education climbs.

Many of our peer universities, such as Harvard, have begun using their vast endowments to extend financial aid to academically distinguished students from middle-income families — even including those with incomes of up to $180,000 — frequently making these elite privates less expensive to attend than Berkeley. Their laudable efforts pose a difficult question: What can be done to keep public universities affordable for low- and middle-income families?

A stronger public-private partnership must be created to ensure that Berkeley’s doors will remain open to the broadest spectrum of talented students today and in the future.

Recognizing that only through increased private support can Berkeley’s public mission be upheld, the University has set the unprecedented goal of raising $300 million for the Berkeley Undergraduate Scholarships endowment as a cornerstone of The Campaign for Berkeley. This influx of new funding will enable Berkeley to significantly increase the size of its endowment, thereby doubling the amount of scholarships it can offer.