Record Number of Low-Income Students at the University of California

Using annual federal data on Pell Grant recipients, JBHE ranks the nation’s highest-rated liberal arts colleges and research universities by the percentage of low-income students on campus. (click here for the latest report.) The University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles typically have a far greater percentage of low-income students than all of the other high-ranking universities and liberal arts colleges.

Now a new report shows that at all nine undergraduate campuses of the University of California, 39 percent of the students come from low-income families. This is up 8 percentage points from two years ago. This is the largest percentage of students from low-income families in the university system’s history. This year, there are more than 70,000 low-income students enrolled at the University of California campuses.

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