Financial Aid

To help students during the recession, USC is announcing an 8% increase in the funds it expects to commit to undergraduate financial aid for the 2009-10 school year. The additional money, all in the form of grants, would amount to about $13.2 million on top of the $165 million in general aid funds that the Los Angeles school awarded to undergraduates this year. USC also spent about $15 million this year on scholarships that are restricted by donors to particular groups of students and expects that amount to remain about the same in the fall.

The economic crisis is pushing growing numbers of college freshmen to look for part-time jobs, scrounge for financial aid and turn down admission offers from schools that were their dream campuses, according to a national survey by UCLA researchers. Even in the early days of the current recession, money worries were evident among the students polled for UCLA's 43rd annual "American Freshman" survey, which is being released today. The study found that 43% of students viewed financial aid as very important or essential to their choice of a college.

University of California President Mark G. Yudof on Thursday proposed boosting the university's financial aid program to cover all academic fees for students from families with incomes of less than $60,000 a year. Most low-income UC students already receive such aid, and officials said the plan would make only about 1,100 additional students eligible to have all fees covered.

A proposed settlement in a federal antitrust suit could raise NCAA limits on financial aid and allow schools to pay athletes for other expenses such as travel, health insurance and laundry. A trial scheduled in Los Angeles this month has been delayed while the settlement is being completed, plaintiffs attorney Stephen Morrissey said Friday. He would not divulge details of the proposed agreement. "When the settlement is completed, it will become public record," Morrissey said.

In order to keep up with rising costs for undergraduates' education, the University of California should attempt to create a $2-billion endowment for extra financial aid, according to a report presented Wednesday to the Board of Regents. All of that money might come from private donations over the next 10 years or be split between such donations and state funds, suggested UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who headed a study group on the affordability of undergraduate education.

As colleges begin sending out acceptance letters, high school seniors fretting about how to pay for school can learn about financial aid options at free workshops starting today. Hundreds of volunteers will staff 35 multilingual Cash for College sessions across Los Angeles today and dozens more scheduled statewide until March 2, the deadline to apply for the California Student Aid Commission's Cal Grant program.

Joining a trend that reinforces the gap between the nation's wealthiest schools and those far short of multibillion-dollar endowments, Stanford University on Wednesday became the latest elite institution to announce a big boost in financial aid for undergraduates from the middle class.

Jaime Ulloa Jr. is going to make it -- his deadline, that is. The 17-year-old Carson High School senior made sure Tuesday that he electronically filed his Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a final step in his college application process. But thousands of other California students could miss an important deadline -- and that's what state officials apparently want them to do.

With family investments and house values battered by the financial crisis, colleges and universities in California and around the nation are seeing an increase in students seeking financial aid and are bracing for even more. At the same time, higher education's ability to meet that extra need is in question because the value of many college endowments has dropped as well, experts say.

www.adventuresineducation.org -- For many, the first test of college is figuring out how to pay for it. College applicants and their parents face a bewildering array of grant, loan and scholarship programs, each with its own application and qualification process. Adventures in Education, a nonprofit program run by the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp., can help guide you through the financial aid maze.