A net price calculator that can determine the price to attend college will be available to all students this fall, via the financial aid page on UNA’s website.

The net price calculator, which every postsecondary institution must have to satisfy the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, will help all students determine the price of attending UNA by gathering information about the student’s academic records and dependency.

“It’s designed to give students an up-to-date view of what they will pay for, or what financial aid they can get,” said David Shields, vice president of Student Affairs. “We have the average attendance cost in our catalog, but this will help people plan a little better.”

All net price calculators must output a set of elements, which includes estimations of total attendance price, tuition, fees, total grant aid and a net price, according to the Department of Education’s website.

“It will enable students to get a view of the cost, but I don’t think it should become a student’s decision on a university,” Shields said.

The calculator that UNA will use for the next semester is provided as a template by the Department of Education, according to Ben Baker, director of Student Financial Services, though there are other options available through private vendors.

The basic template for the calculator only provides students with basic information about a college’s cost of admission, while a calculator provided by a private vendor can be fine tuned to include other financial aid opportunities to students besides federal aid and basic scholarships.

Though the university is starting out with a basic calculator, it is possible that a more specialized calculator will be added in the future.

“I think it’s a good idea, and we will see how popular an idea it is,” Baker said. “If only 10 families use it, we wouldn’t want to spend great sums of money on it. If hundreds of families use it, we would definitely consider upgrading.”