As Cal Poly hits a record in applications, it also has the lowest number of Pell Grant recipients across all of the California State Universities (CSUs) according to a report released by the Cal State Student Association (CSSA) in September 2023. As Cal Poly claims to be dedicated to increasing the diversity on campus, the school is still behind on the financial side compared to the rest of the CSUs.
The CSU recently announced that the deadline for intent to register will be pushed back to May 15 this year for new students, including both first-years and first-time students. This applies to all CSUs, including Cal Poly. The decision comes following a delay in FAFSA processing by the U.S. Department of Education. The point of pushing the deadline back is to allow students to have more time to consider the financial aid they receive, thereby increasing the likelihood of students accepting offers from Cal Poly and other CSUs.
Schools would normally set their aid offers by March, and now those offers will be delayed. A part of these aid offers are the Pell Grants, which are defined by the Federal Student Aid website as “Federal Pell Grants usually are awarded only to undergraduate students who display exceptional financial need and have not earned a bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree.”
To qualify for Pell Grants, the Disability Benefits 101 Organization says, “Although students with family incomes up to $45,000 may be eligible, most awards go to students with family incomes below $20,000. There is no limit on the number of years students can receive a Pell Grant, however only one award may be granted each year by only one educational institution.”
Assistant Vice President for Communications and Media Relations at Cal Poly Matt Lazier explains that there are two main reasons for Cal Poly’s lack of low-income students.
The first is “the overall high cost of living in the area impacts students.” According to Lazier, “The majority (45%) of CSU students reside at home, while, in contrast, less than 5% of Cal Poly students reside at home.”
In addition to the troubles of finding off-campus housing, Cal Poly has the highest tuition by more than a $2,000 margin and the second most expensive on-campus living costs and off-campus housing is much harder to come by at Cal Poly, according to the CSSA report.
Lazier stated the second reason Cal Poly has a hard time attracting low-income students is that “the CSU historically has been underfunded by the state.”
Due to the state’s financial aid structure, Lazier says that Cal Poly is “more expensive to attend than the UCs, net of financial aid, for students from families with incomes less than $90,000 per year.”
The UCs are Cal Poly’s main competitors for student choice, so low-income students who get more financial support from UCs are more likely to choose an alternative to Cal Poly, according to Lazier.
Lazier added that this is exacerbated for “students in Cal Poly’s high-investment majors in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, College of Architecture and Environmental Design and College of Engineering,” as the costs of instruction outweigh the funding from the state and tuition.
According to Lazier, “many of the academically qualified underrepresented student applicants who might have had interest in Cal Poly were either not applying to the university or applying but choosing other competitor institutions that were ultimately cheaper, net of financial aid.”
This is a problem for the school, as it strives to improve the “recruiting and retaining diverse students” according to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion page on the Cal Poly website.
In addition to the usual cost of attendance problems at Cal Poly, the delays in aid offers this year will possibly make it even harder for low-income students to know if they can afford to attend Cal Poly, due to the rollout of financial aid packages occurring later than usual.
Lazier listed steps that Cal Poly has taken to decrease the cost of attendance for low-income students. These include growing the Partner School Program, the creation of the Cal Poly Scholars program, the implementation of the Cal Poly Opportunity Fee, the Cal Poly College Based Fee Student Aid and Learn by Doing Plan.
These improvements have not gone unnoticed by some students.
“I would say that it has been reasonably diverse and I have met a lot of people in the Cal Poly Scholars program,” Mechanical engineering freshman Wesley Gerrish said. “Two of the kids in my WOW group were in the scholars program.”
For out-of-state students, the cost of attending Cal Poly is even higher. This is partly due to the Cal Poly Opportunity Fee. According to the financial aid page on the Cal Poly website, the expected tuition total for non-California residents is $31,674, nearly $20,000 more than in-state residents.
“As an out-of-state student, I feel like I have an undue tuition burden when compared to Californians going here,” philosophy freshman Isaiah Toth said.
Toth said this is partly because there’s “an expensive opportunity fee just to be able to take classes here.”
The opportunity fee is more than $8,000.
According to the Cal Poly website, the point of the opportunity cost is to, “implement a new fee aimed at increasing access to academically qualified low-income and first-generation undergraduate students in California.”
Despite the increased cost for out-of-state students, the cost of attending Cal Poly is still generally less than the UCs. The cost of attendance page has not been updated to include estimated costs for 2024-25 school year, but it does estimate that costs for the 2023-24 year would be around $53,000. The estimated cost for UC out of state students that live on campus is around $72,000 according to the cost of attendance page.