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The University of Virginia is expanding its financial aid program to cover all tuition and fees for families who make $100,000 or less in an effort to increase access to the state’s flagship university and account for inflation.
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Under the current AccessUVA aid program, in-state students from families who make $80,000 or less are eligible for grants and scholarships that cover the cost of all tuition and fees. A plan approved by the university’s board of visitors on Friday expands access to any in-state family with an income of $100,000 or less. Families with an income of $50,000 or less will receive financial aid covering tuition, fees, housing and dining. Under the previous plan, the threshold to cover cost of living was $30,000.
The estimated annual cost of attendance this year at U-Va., which is consistently ranked as one of the top public universities in the country, is about $40,000 for in-state students and about $80,000 for out-of-state students.
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U-Va. President Jim Ryan said the goal of the expansion is to increase access to more families. It’s also designed to reflect the federal poverty threshold increase as well as the financial pressures of inflation. The effort will be funded entirely through philanthropy, the university said. The estimated cost for the expansion is about $1 million, U-Va. spokesman Brian Coy said.
“Our mission is to welcome talented students from all walks of life, and these expanded grants and scholarships will help us do just that,” Vice Provost for Enrollment Stephen Farmer said in a statement. “Once Virginians from middle- and lower-income households earn admission to UVA, these scholarships will make it possible for them to join us. When they do, they’ll make everyone around them better.”
Other universities have recently taken similar approaches to expand financial aid. Last fall, Princeton expanded its full-ride threshold from a family earning less than $65,000 to those who earn $100,000 and under. Around the same time, the University of Maryland announced a program to help with any outstanding costs for in-state students that federal Pell Grants don’t cover.
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Sandy Baum, an economist at the Urban Institute who for many years analyzed financial aid and pricing trends for the College Board, said many universities are increasing thresholds for aid programs to keep up with inflation. She noted that while federal and state aid helps economically disadvantaged families afford college, institutional programs like the one announced Friday are mostly helpful in communicating what resources are available.
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“There might be people who don’t want to apply to University of Virginia because they think it’s too expensive, and now you make this big announcement and now they’ll apply,” Baum said. “Even if it doesn’t give anybody more money than they got before, it increases access by providing information.”
Baum also noted that because of the aid programs, often the most affordable schools for low-income students to attend are the most prestigious. The barrier is getting in.
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“The University of Virginia is very hard to get into, and disproportionately the students who have the academic preparation to get in are not from the lowest-income families,” Baum said. “So in a way, one of the issues about these institutions is they can afford to make it really cheap for low income students because they don’t have that many low income students.”
For the fall of 2022, U-Va. offered admission to about 19 percent of the more than 50,000 students who applied and enrolled about 8 percent. About 86 percent of enrolled freshman reported ranking in top 10th of their class. Of the about 16,793 undergraduates enrolled at the Charlottesville-based university in 2022, about 52 percent were White, 18 percent were Asian American, and about 7 percent were Black and Latino.
U-Va. awarded about $179 million in need-based financial aid in the 2022-2023 academic year. About 16 percent of first-year students this year qualified for Pell Grants, which are designed to help families with financial need. That’s up from about 11 percent of Pell-eligible students in the freshman class in 2021.
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The AccessUVA program was established in 2004 as a way to increase access to the school and open the opportunity to students with different backgrounds. The current income thresholds were announced in 2018, after Ryan assumed the presidency and committed to attracting more first-generation and underrepresented students to the school.
Under the expansion plan announced Friday, Virginia families with an income of $150,000 or less will receive at least $2,000 in need-based grants. The plan continues to cap need-based loans over four years at $4,000 for low-income Virginians, and at $18,000 for other Virginians with need. Loans for out-of-state students with need are capped at $28,000 over four years.
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