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A new UA scholarship program that will enable hundreds of students a year to earn a degree without going into debt is aimed at shattering low-income families' perceptions of who can attend college.

The program, announced Thursday, is called Arizona Assurance and matches in-state students whose families earn less than $42,400 a year with financial aid, grants and work-study programs that cover the cost of attending the University of Arizona — estimated at $14,354 a year.

Roughly 600 freshmen have been accepted into the program, which also matches students with faculty advisers to keep them on track to graduate.

UA President Robert Shelton had been pushing for the scholarship since arriving on campus two years ago, modeling it on a program he worked on while at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said Paul Kohn, UA's dean of admissions.

The goal is to get low-income families to view college as a viable option for their children and see past economic and psychological barriers that can prevent some from even thinking of attending a university.

"A lot of poor people count themselves out of the college equation because they think they can't afford it or have an aversion to going into debt," Kohn said.

With the family-income qualifications for the program near the median income level of Arizona families, the program is designed to make higher education accessible to the entire community, said Scott Cason, director of marketing in the office of enrollment management.

"The biggest thing we want to do with this program is make this institution more accessible to the people of Arizona," he said.

With that access, the UA's incoming class should become increasingly diverse, Kohn said.

Half of the 600 students who qualified for the scholarship are from ethnic minorities, and most of the others come from diverse backgrounds, too.

Once the students arrive on campus, they'll be paired with faculty members who will mentor them throughout their college career, which is crucial to retaining the students, Cason said.

"Getting students in the door is only a fraction of the battle," he said.

While the program is in its infancy, Kohn and Cason said it could expand in the future, although that will depend on the amount of financial support the program receives.

"We scraped together the resources for this year, but we're hoping that it will create some momentum that donors will get behind," Kohn said.