Financial Aid Working Group

Financial Aid Working Group is focused on developing state guidelines

Members:

• Rebecca Sliger (pending ;) ) - Lead

• Carol Hsu - Executive Committee Representative

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Next steps:

1 - Identify someone to lead the Financial Aid Working Group

2 - Carol is willing to be the Executive Committee member representative on the WG

3 - Have the lead reach out to WCERTE membership to seek colleagues to tackle the points Julie states:

(1) Clearly understand the issue, (2) Identify opportunities and challenges and (3) Determine next steps such as communications.

4 - WG to present the work at the Fall WCERTE Meeting

Hi Patrick

Hope you are well. As I shared with you in July, at the summer meeting JTC asked ICW and COP to work with their sector financial aid directors to discuss how baccalaureate financial aid is impacted if a student changes their major to exclude earlier courses and focus on the current intended major. In other words, how to count or not count the initial major courses at the baccalaureate level.

In early August, COP met with our sector financial aid directors regarding this topic. Across the sector all transfer credits accepted are countable credits toward financial aid limit maximums. Should a student reach said maximum, including transfer work, they may appeal for additional consideration/aid extension. In addition, the federal financial aid handbook<https://ifap.ed.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/2019-08/1920FSAHbkVol1Master.pdf> (pp. 12-14), the Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) timeframe must be calculated based on all courses applicable to a student's major whenever taken.

For our sector to effectively address this issue we need to be able to identify which classes that were previously taken do not apply to the current major. In the example, shared at JTC, which are the nursing courses that do not apply to the engineering degree. This is challenging since our financial aid audit systems do not do a course by major evaluation but look at total credits needed to earn a degree.

We believe the next best step is to work through a specific degree area. Since Engineering has already been identified and there is an interest from WCERTE re: this issue, I am reaching out to you, with the support of JTC, to ask if this issue can be added to the next meeting agenda to allow the baccalaureates and community and technical colleges to: (1) Clearly understand the issue, (2) Identify opportunities and challenges and (3) Determine next steps such as communications.

If you this is how to move forward, we would like to invite some financial aid directors to the meeting for this part of the agenda.

Thank you for your consideration.Julie

Julie Garver

Director of Academic Affairs and Policy| Council of Presidents

Tel: 360.292.4102 l jgarver@councilofpresidents.org

Example of current Financial Aid issues from Rebecca Sliger