Commitments are the individual records in Graduate Division’s Financial Portal that pledge a payment
of a student’s tuition and fees or a monetary stipend to the student. Commitments must be pledged for a specified term and year and, through the new Financial Portal, can be pledged for future term and years.
Commitments can be added or changed during the academic year. After the close of the academic year, changes can only be made by contacting the Graduate Division.
Once a commitment is entered into the system and approved, the system checks for eligibility requirements and, if eligible, creates an award for that commitment. The award then remains in the system until the first possible quarterly date of disbursement, when the system again verifies the student’s eligibility before releasing funds for disbursement.
Student Commitments
Student commitments pledge payment of student fees or for a stipend. A commitment is made for a specific term and year. All commitments for payment of fees must be paid in one of the traditional 4 academic terms – fall, winter, spring, summer.
For stipends, Graduate Division added 2 additional “terms” to allow departments to provide stipends that disburse in the summer months and select the academic year budget allocation impacted.
Departments can choose to pay a commitment during one of the four academic terms, fall, winter, spring, summer. Stipends can also be paid pre-Fall or post-Spring. Pre-fall stipends begin disbursing the first week of July (consult GD payment schedule for exact date) and draws from the fall budget. Post-spring stipends begin disbursing mid-June through the end of June. (consult GD payment schedule for exact date) and draws from the spring budget. |
Spring | Spring-Post | F I S C A L C L O S E | Fall-Pre | Fall |
Registration: SPRING Fiscal Year: 2020-21 | Registration: FALL Fiscal Year: 2021-22 | |||
Disburses: Spring Quarter | Disburses: After spring quarter ending in June | Disburses: July until Fall Quarter | Disburses: Fall Quarter | |
Pre-Fall Term (stipends only) - for disbursements beginning early July using funding program budget of the upcoming academic year and requires Fall registration
Post-Spring Term (stipends only) - for disbursement beginning mid-June using funding program budget from concluding academic year and requires spring registration
Budget impact of stipend term
Academic Year | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-23 |
Term | Pre-Fall 2020 (requires Fall registration, impacts 2020-21 allocation) | Pre-Fall 2021(requires Fall registration, impacts 2021-22 allocation) | Pre-Fall 2021 (requires Fall registration, impacts 2022-23 allocation) |
| Fall 2020 | Fall 2021 | Fall 2022 |
| Winter 2021 | Winter 2022 | Winter 2023 |
| Spring 2021 | Spring 2022 | Spring 2023 |
| Post-Spring 2021 (requires Spring registration, impacts 2020-21 allocation) | Post-Spring 2022 (requires Spring registration, impacts 2021-22 allocation) | Post-Spring 2023 (requires Spring registration, impacts 2022-23 allocation) |
A Ptype (payment type) identifies the type of payment the commitment will pay - either a stipend or a specified graduate student fee (tuition and fees, health insurance, non-resident tuition, professional fees).
Ptype options include: Tuition – payment of quarterly tuition, student services fees, and campus based fees Health Insurance – payment of quarterly health insurance fees Non-Resident Tuition – payment of quarterly non-resident supplementation tuition Professional Fees – payment of quarterly professional degree supplementation tuition (currently only Technology Management) |
By selecting a payment option of “Full” (for fees: health insurance, non-resident tuition, professional fees, tuition) when creating a commitment for a student, the department indicates the intent to pay the full UC amount of those fees (More Info – fees) as dictated by the Registrar’s Office. And should the fees be adjusted by the Office of the President, the Financial Portal commitments will be adjusted though Graduate Division’s Fee Escalation process to the “full” adjusted amount.
By selecting a payment option of “Partial” (for tuition) when creating a commitment for a student, the department indicates the intent to pay the full UC tuition amount and student services fees (More Info – fees). Similar to the selection of “full”, the commitment amount will be adjusted should they be changed by the Registrar’s Office.
EXAMPLE – FELLOWSHIP WITH FULL FEES A department agrees to pay a student’s full tuition and health insurance for the upcoming year. The following commitments are entered: Fall “Full Tuition” for $4523 Fall “Custom Health Insurance” for $1108 Come fall, the actual assessed amount for each term is $4545 for tuition and $1120 for insurance. The tuition fellowship automatically adjusts to $4545 without any additional action by the department. The health insurance fellowship remains at $1108, and the student will have to pay the $12 balance. If the fellowship agreement states the full amount of the fee will be paid, commitments should be entered using the “Full” option. |
Committed, Awarded, & Paid Status
When an item is Committed, that shows the maximum value that you are willing to pay for that item, and if you have a budget in that fund program, that amount is going to be reduced from your available funds.
Example: The department has committed to Student A that the department will pay all of their Tuition. The full tuition amount is $4,527.03 and therefore you create a commitment to pay UP TO $4,527.03. That same amount is reduced from your available budget.
What shows in the Awarded column is the TRUE CURRENT NEED of Student A for that item.
Example: If the department’s support is the only support, then the awarded value will be that full assessment value of $4,527.03. If student A receives partial fee remission, they only need $300 of your commitment. Therefore the AWARDED value will be $300 since that is what is needed after fee remission to pay the whole value.
The department’s commitment remains set to pay UP TO $4,527.03 even though at this point in time not all of that is NEEDED. Because of that Commitment, or promise, to support the student up to that $4,527.03 value, that full amount is still being held up or saved should it need to pay, and therefore still reducing that total budget number by the $4,527.03.
If the student’s fee remission were to be removed for whatever reason, the commitment would then step back in and pay that full value instead of only the $300. If the department needed to recoup the unexpected windfall of $4,200 then they would need to take action and edit your existing commitment to the lesser amount. This essentially means the department is no longer committing to the student to pay UP TO the full value of the Tuition assessment, but only UP TO the $300 amount that remains after fee remission. At the point that that adjustment is approved, the remaining budget will reflect the additional $4,200 previously not available.
Disbursed, or Paid, is the amount that was actually sent to the student’s BARC account, or to Accounts Payable as a stipend.
Example, Student A’s record (before any adjustments) will show a committed value of $4,527.03, and awarded value of $300, and (all things being normal for this example) a $300 disbursement value. If the Disbursed or paid column shows as $0 and not that $300, that means it has not gone through our disbursement process.
The usual potential reasons for an item not being paid are:
1)It is either still pending approval or was just approved since the last scheduled disbursement. You can see the status of this directly in the student’s financial commitment details on the portal.
2)The student is not registered in enough units to let it disburse.
Commitment entries into the Financial Portal follow the supplementation limits (More Info - policy). The Financial Portal limits commitment entries to a minimum amount of $50 and maximum amount of $13,000 on most entries. The total maximum fellowship stipend from all campus sources is $39,000 for the 9-month period (fall, winter, spring); $52,000 for the 12-month period (including summer), with the exception of fellowship stipends from extramural fund sources.