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 student aid fellowship stipend to the student. Commitments must be pledged for a specified term and year. Commitments can be pledged for current and 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 to fee paying sources must be paid in one of the traditional 4 academic terms – fall, winter, spring, summer. (For summer fee commitments for graduate students enrolled in summer units, please contact Graduate Division.)

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.

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

For commitments relating to summer quarter registration, please contact Graduate Division.

Students should see stipends in their bank account up to 3 business days after Graduate Division disbursement if they have eRefund set up, or they will receive an email from BARC in the days following disbursement if there is a physical check. They can check the "Fellowship" tab on their BARC account for more information after the disbursement date. International students might experience a delay if their stipend has to be reviewed for tax assessment - see "International Graduate Students" for more information. 

Budget impact of stipend term

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).

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), but not campus fees. Similar to the selection of “full”, the commitment amount will be adjusted should they be changed by the Registrar’s Office.

By selecting a payment option of “Custom” (for stipend and fees: health insurance, non-resident tuition, professional fees, tuition) when creating a commitment for a student, the department indicates a specific amount to pay. (Please note, custom stipend commitments can only be edited up, they can not be zeroed out. Contact Graduate Division for more information.)

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 $5119.13 and therefore you create a commitment to pay UP TO $5,119.13.  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: The department has committed to Student A that the department will pay all of their Tuition.  The full tuition amount is $5119.13 and therefore you create a commitment to pay UP TO $5,119.13. The student petitions to be in Absentia and is assessed in absentia fees, so the awarded amount is only $767.87.

The department’s commitment remains set to pay UP TO $5,119.13 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 $5,119.13 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 $5,119.13. 

In the case of the in absentia student, the department could take action by editing the existing commitment to a Custom commitment of the actual 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 custom amount.  At the point that that adjustment is approved, the remaining budget will reflect the $4,3251.26 previously not available.

Disbursed, or Paid, is the amount that was actually sent to the student’s BARC account (tuition, fees and health), or to Accounts Payable as a stipend.

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.