The University of Colorado system is teaming up with the Denver Scholarship Foundation to provide thousands of dollars in financial aid to low-income Denver students.

CU will give up to $3,000 a year to eligible Denver Public Schools graduates who are enrolling this year at the Boulder, Colorado Springs or Denver campuses, officials announced Monday. That's on top of $5,000 to $6,000 these students will get from the scholarship foundation.

The combination would more than cover tuition, which varies from campus to campus. It is just below $6,000 for Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences students who live in Colorado.

The new CU money is only available to students receiving foundation scholarships. About 100 recent DPS graduates who intend to go to CU are eligible, a number that officials expect to grow.

Only about 2 percent of CU's 40,000 undergraduates come from DPS. Three-quarters of those students attend the Denver campus, said Michael Poliakoff, vice president for academic affairs and research for the CU system.

Poliakoff said the new partnership with the foundation was designed to help students "who desperately need that support."

It also is expected to help increase diversity on the campuses. CU-Boulder has been under pressure in recent years to increase its minority enrollment. Complaints by minority students have prompted the administration to try harder to make the campus more welcoming.

"It's a diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds as well as the traditional categories of diversity," Poliakoff said. "In that regard we think that these students will be bringing important personal experiences to the campuses."

CU President Bruce Benson hailed the new partnership, saying it "makes the dream of a college education a reality for many DPS students."

The scholarship foundation, targeted toward poor DPS students, was established in 2006 by oil and gas businessman Tim Marquez and his wife, Bernadette.

Scholarship recipients can use the money to attend a host of public and private colleges in Colorado. Among other requirements, students must maintain a 2.0 grade point average to keep their scholarships and the new CU grant if they are University of Colorado students.

Five hundred of 609 graduates at three pilot DPS high schools last year applied for scholarships. But only 170 students, about half of those deemed eligible, enrolled and showed up for class.

Cindy Abramson, executive director of the foundation, said 74 percent of last year's scholarship recipients are the first in their family to attend college.

"Nationally, the statistics would support that to some extent they are the most vulnerable to not completing college," she said. "It's not just a Colorado problem. This is is a national problem."

Staff writer Nancy Mitchell contributed to this report.

Get jump on next year

* It's too late to apply for financial aid from the Denver Scholarship Foundation and the new CU program for this fall. To get a head start on next year's contest,go to denverscholarship.org or call 303-951-4140. Applications will be accepted this fall.