This year, each undergraduate student will pay around $160 to the undergraduate student government to fund its associated programs.
These fees result from ballot measures that received a majority of student votes in previous USAC elections. Each fee referendum’s text and its margin of passage is available on USAC’s website.
The most recently added fee is the Cultural Affairs Commission Arts Restoring Community fee, which was passed in 2014.
The visualization below shows the composition of the total cost since USAC’s establishment in 1982.
Hover over the fee titles at the bottom of the graph for a description of each fee.
Annual USAC fees per student (1982–2015)
Despite the sizable increase in USAC fees over the last decade, the increase in recent years is still less than the increase in the UC’s average annual student charges for undergraduate students.
The annual USAC fee was set at $24 in 1982 and has risen to $160.44 in 2014, a 6.7x increase. On average, an in-state UC student was charged $647 per year in 1982 and $13,317 in 2014, a 10.2x increase.
The graph below compares each year’s UC and USAC fees relative to their initial fees in 1982.
Increase in UC tuition vs. increase in USAC fees (1982–2014)
Harrison was the 2015–2016 data editor at the Daily Bruin. He studied linguistics and computer science at UCLA and has interned as a CMS developer at The New York Times. When he’s not data-nerding, he enjoys casual Web-apping, design, scuba diving, pretending he’s good at musical instruments and planning retreats.
