Overview

Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS) is how Regent Award manages the final AY's units and weeks in a non-term Academic Plan before a student completes his/her program. The page also describes the logic for how Regent Award decides whether 1 or 2 Payment Periods should be calculated in the final Remaining Period of Study (RPS) before a student completes his/her program.

Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS) and RPS Final AYs

Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS) is the process of how Regent Award determines:

How many units and weeks are remaining in the student's final Academic Plan Year;
The number of Payment Periods (1 or 2 Payment Periods); and
The lengths of each Payment Period, in units and weeks.

In Regent Award, Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS) includes:

Calculating the student's remaining units in their RPS AY;
Determining the length of the final academic plan year, based on the remaining units;
Anticipating the units and weeks for those Payment Periods;
Dividing the Academic Plan year into either one or two Payment Periods; and
Adjusting the actual Payment Period units, weeks, and number of Payment Periods based on actual course registrations.

AYs: Academic Plan Years. Non-Term Academic Plans are divided into Academic Plan Years (AYs). Each AY covers a set of units and weeks when a Non-Term student is in school. The AY length, in units and weeks, is defined in Program Setup. AYs are labeled AY1, AY2, etc. on the Regent Award Academic Plan.

Final AY and RPS. When students are in their final AY before finishing their program, they often can finish with less than a full AY in units. Also, students may have transfer credits or program-level course adjustments. Whenever a student needs less than a full AY in units before completing their program, that final AY is called a Remaining Period of Study (RPS). The student's RPS AY must be shortened proportionally, to only cover the units and weeks needed to finish the student's program. The AY reported to COD is never shorter than the AY weeks defined under Program Setup.

Detecting the Final AY

Units determine the final AY. Regent Award compares the student's Remaining Units to the program's Academic Year units in Program Setup. If the student has less than 1 AY in remaining units, the student is in a Remaining Period of Study and that AY will be proportionally reduced to cover only the remaining units and weeks before the student finishes. Remaining Weeks are not used to determine if an AY is the final RPS AY.

Setting 1 or 2 Payment Periods in Final AY

Most Non-Term AYs have 2 Payment Periods. However, the final RPS AY can be either 1 or 2 Payment Periods. If either of the following statements are true, a student should only have 1 Payment Period in their final RPS AY:

Remaining Units is less than or equal to half an AY in units, OR
Remaining Weeks is less than or equal to half an AY in weeks

Regent Award will use 2 Payment Periods if both:

The student's remaining units are more than half an AY, AND
The student is registered for more than half the AY in weeks.

Examples

A student is in their final year of a Non-Term program. The program's Academic Year length is 36 units and 32 weeks, as defined in Program Setup. The student has 24.5 units remaining in their final AY RPS.
1. Before registration, Regent Award would anticipate 24.5 units and 22 weeks, in 2 Payment Periods of 12.25 units and 11 weeks each.
2. If the student registers for coursework of 24.5 units in 16 weeks or less, the final AY would be only 1 Payment Period (because 16 weeks = half of the 32 weeks).
3. If the student registers for 24.5 units in 17 weeks or more, the student would have 2 Payment Periods.
A student has slightly more than half an AY in remaining units. When the student registers for courses with exactly half an AY in weeks, Regent Award should use only 1 Payment Period. If the student later changes the course registration to be more than half an AY in weeks, Regent Award would change it to 2 Payment Periods.

When the number of Payment Periods changes, Regent Award will log an Activity Log entry with the old and new numbers of Payment Periods.

One Payment Period or Two?

Anticipated Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS) Before Course Registration

Regent Award initially creates a Non-Term student's Academic Plan during Packaging.

For a non-term student's Remaining Period of Study (RPS), before full course registration is received, Regent Award anticipates the number of units and weeks in the student's final academic plan year. If a student has less than a full year of units remaining to finish that final AY, Regent Award should anticipate less than the full AY in remaining units and proportionally reduce the RPS units, weeks, and dates. Regent Award should also anticipate either 1 or 2 Payment Periods in that final Academic Plan year, based on the student's expected remaining units and expected remaining weeks in the RPS.

Regent Award manages Payment Periods and AYs when a student has no registration, or has partial registration but is not registered for all the courses needed to complete the Payment Period. Regent Award continues to extend those "open" Payment Periods and AYs, projecting future units and weeks the student will need to finish their program.

Special Cases for Non-Term Payment Period Length for short Remaining Period of Study (RPS)

Manual Override for Number of Payment Periods

Sometimes, schools might wish to change the number of Payment Periods, overriding the logic and the calculated number of Payment Periods. Users can do this in the Program Management Wizard by editing the Academic Year, making a Manual AY and choosing the number of Payment Periods.

Short Programs - Program Completion Units or Weeks are 1 AY or Less

Programs must be more than 1 AY in length for Regent Award to apply the 1 or 2 payment period logic. For programs where the entire length of the program is only 1 AY (or less), in either weeks or units, Regent Award always uses 2 Payment Periods.

Reporting AY Length to COD during Shortened Remaining Periods of Study

When a student completes the final academic year of a nonterm program in less than a full AY as defined in Program Setup, Regent Award must ensure that the correct AY length is reported to COD. When the RPS AY does not contain enough registered units to make up a full AY (per the program's definition), the AY length must be extended to accommodate the rest of the units that would have made up a full AY per the AY definition on Program Setup. Doing so allows for the student's LP/AY fraction to properly represent the correct portion of Direct Loan Subsidized eligibility used for the AY.

The calculation for extending the AY is the Program Pace, and should be used UNLESS the result of the calculation is an AY length that is less than the program definition, in which case, the program definition should be used:
- ```
remaining units in AY = Program Definition AY units - Total Progression Program Applicable Units
```
- ```
weeks/units in program definition x remaining units in AY
```
The resulting value of this formula should be added to the Total Progression Program Applicable Weeks in the AY, to result in the AY length for weeks, which are used on the Academic Plan in Regent Award (and to be provided to COD).
When the formula results in a decimal value for the weeks, round up to the nearest whole number.