Most Affordable Colleges in California 2025

Badge for MOST AFFORDABLE COLLEGES IN CALIFORNIA

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Published: Mar 11, 2021
Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Key Takeaways

The University of California system of colleges dominates the list of the best affordable colleges in California.
California has a diverse group of colleges including technology and career preparation universities, small colleges, religious schools, and large state schools that support athletic rivalries.
California has several schools witha tuition rate below $10K.

Table of Contents

10 Most Affordable Colleges in California 2025

University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Santa Cruz
+1
University of California, Davis
–1
University of California, Riverside
San Francisco State University
+1
San Diego State University
–1

2025 Ranking Update

Our Influence Ranking Engine™ leverages machine learning to track the real-world influence of colleges and universities over time. Below you’ll see which schools gained or lost ground for the 2025 school year.

The top 5 spots remain unchanged in our 2025 ranking of the most affordable colleges in California. In fact, 8 of the top 10 schools in our ranking are part of the University of California system. UC colleges have expanded access and affordability in their schools by increasing financial aid packages , especially for in-state students from low-and middle-income families.

UCLA specifically has improved its First-Year Experience Program, offering more orientation and support services for incoming students, particularly first-generation and low-income students. The university has also increased housing availability, ensuring more affordable on-campus housing options for students.

UCLA and UC San Diego have also increased housing availability, ensuring more affordable on-campus housing options for students.

How do we determine California's best affordable colleges and universities?

Methodology

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.

Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.

To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.

There are 59 colleges and universities in California with stated tuitions and fees under $20,000/year. The following list of the most affordable colleges and universities in California is composed entirely of schools offering bachelor’s degree programs, have stated tuition and fees near or under the national average of $16,000/year, and are fully accredited colleges.