Overview

Regent Award automatically packages awards for eligible students. The awards are created in order using the sequence and rules defined in the Packaging Philosophy.

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Financial Aid Package

Regent Award calculates a student's total financial aid package. The package is the combination of grants, scholarships, loans, and other funds to help the student pay for their education-related costs. The process of calculating a financial aid package is called packaging. If a student’s information changes, the system will need to repackage the student to adjust any existing award amounts or reconsider eligibility. For example, a student may make enrollment changes resulting in a different Cost of Attendance (COA). Regent would repackage the student to update the student’s existing awards and total financial aid package using the new COA and new enrollment information.

During packaging, Regent Award automatically determines a student’s eligibility and calculates the award amounts for the student’s financial aid. The system can package a student with or without an ISIR, though many federal funds may need an ISIR for eligibility.

The system packages or repackages multiple students at a time during the Batch Packaging process. The system can also package an individual student, such as when a user accesses the /wiki/spaces/REM/pages/7012526 on the Academic Plan tab.  Users may also add or edit awards manually; see Add An Individual Award using the Add Award Wizard (AAW).  External resource awards are added from the Awards tab.

Normally, Regent Award will try to package a student for the remainder of their Academic Plan to the end of their program. Some awards may be estimated, such as federal awards for future FAYs when an ISIR is not yet available. Schools may optionally configure whether or not to estimate those future awards in Fund Setup.

Award Periods and Loan Periods

Regent Award calculates awards based on specific lengths of time, called Award Periods and Loan Periods. All awards in Regent Award have both an Award Period and a Loan Period.

Different types of awards use different time periods. The two main types are Federal Award Year (FAY) and Academic Year (AY).

• FAY-based awards such as Pell Grants primarily use the Award Period, which follow a calendar-year dates. FAYs may cross multiple Academic Years. The federal FAY for Title IV grants, such as Pell, goes from July 1 through June 30 of the next calendar year. For example, FAY 2020-2021 goes from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021.

• AY-based awards such as Federal loans use Loan Periods, which are contained within a single AY. The school defines the program’s Academic Year length. A student might have more than one AY during a calendar year or a FAY.

Open and Closed Periods

An award period or loan period is “open” if it is available for creating and modifying awards. In general, an open loan period or open award period has an end date of today’s date or in the future.

A “closed” period is closed for new awarding because its end date is in the past. In general, the system does not automatically package or repackage loans for past periods (ending yesterday or before). If a loan period or award period is ended, its associated awards will normally stay the same.

Users may still manually add or edit awards for closed periods - see Add An Individual Award using the Add Award Wizard (AAW).  If a Regent Award user modifies an award in a closed period, the system will also repackage other awards in that period.

Terms and Payment Periods

Awarding also uses payment periods (PPs) or terms. A Payment Period or Term is a portion of time within an Academic Year that can be used for awarding a student’s aid. For example, Federal loans use the Financial Award Begin and End dates. The Financial Award Begin Date matches the start date of a payment period in the AY, and the End date matches the end date of a payment period in the same AY. For term and nonstandard term programs, each payment period is a term. Other names for terms or nonstandard terms are semesters, trimesters, quarters, etc. For nonterm programs, the payment period is typically half the Academic Year.

Common Awarding Calculations

Federal Title IV Aid

Pell Grants

Pell Grants use several formulas and a table of Pell Grant scheduled amounts based on a student’s Estimated Family Contribution (EFC). See Federal Pell Grant.

Federal Loan Amount Calculations

For Federal loans, the key eligible amount is calculated by finding the difference between the Cost of Attendance (COA) and the Estimated Financial Assistance (EFA). For the need-based Subsidized loan, the calculation also uses the Estimated Financial Contribution (EFC). 

• Unsubsidized Loans and PLUS:  (COA - EFA)

• Subsidized Loans:  (COA - EFC - EFA)

The calculated eligible amount is an additional constraint to any other restrictions due to annual limits, credit approvals, or lifetime aggregate usage. For example, if a dependent first-year student's remaining COA in an AY is $20,000, and they have $0 EFC, the student would still only be eligible for a maximum $3,500 Subsidized loan due to the lower annual Subsidized borrowing limits. See Direct Loan Annual and Aggregate Limits.

A Regent Award user can also set a lower cap for an award by changing the New Offer amount in Modify Award Wizard. The student will not be able to accept an award greater than the specified New Offer amount. See Modify Award Wizard.

Accepted Amount Constraints

Student Accepted Amount

For some funds, such as Federal Direct Loans, students may Accept a lower amount than their overall eligible amount. Regent Award records the Student Accepted Amount and the date the student last updated the award. When the student Accepts a specific amount, when the system repackages the loan, the updated award amount will not exceed the student’s chosen Accepted amount. The system still continues to recalculate the award’s total eligibility. However, the award’s accepted amount remains at the student’s chosen amount. Regent’s packaging logic will continue to repackage the loans to not exceed the specified amount. The Student Accepted Amount applies to active-acceptance awards (created in Offered status) and passive-acceptance awards (created in Accepted status). For both passive-acceptance and active-acceptance loans, if a student has remaining unused eligibility in a current loan period, the student may choose to accept a higher amount as long as the award is editable.

User Accepted Amount

Regent Award users may also update awards, such as by using Add/Modify Award Wizard (AAW/MAW). Whenever a Regent Award user updates an award’s Accepted amount, the system stores the User Accepted Amount. The Import Awards and Disbursements process also updates the User Accepted Amount.

If the Student Accepted Amount has a different value than the User Accepted Amount, the system will package the award to the most recently updated of those two amounts.

Packaging Philosophy

The school defines the sequence and rules for awarding eligible funds using the Packaging Philosophy. In Regent, a school configures at least one Packaging Philosophy - the set of rules for how to package every available fund, when those funds are combined into a financial aid package for an individual student. The Packaging Philosophy controls the sequence of which funds are awarded in priority order. For example, a school might first award Pell Grants and other gift aid; then apply scholarships and gift aid; and then offer any remaining eligibility as loans. The Pell Grants would be first in the Packaging Philosophy, followed by the scholarship funds, and then the loans with a later priority. A school may also configure whether to auto-package the fund (to automatically create awards). See Packaging Philosophy Setup Data Elements.

Direct Costs and Total COA

A school may have multiple approaches for packaging different groups of students. Each approach is a set of funds and related rules called a Packaging Philosophy. See Packaging Philosophy.

For example, a school may have two sets of packaging approaches:

• Direct Costs: Package to cover only costs directly from the school. For example, tuition and fees are direct costs, but not Transportation or Personal Expenses.

• % of COA: Package to cover the remaining Cost of Attendance (COA) after other funds have been awarded.

Schools may configure multiple packaging philosophies. For example, a "Direct Costs" packaging philosophy might only package loans to cover institutional costs only, such as Tuition and Fees.  A "Full COA" approach might package the same student with much higher loan amounts, up to the total Cost of Attendance.  See /wiki/spaces/RKB/pages/16187658.

For term and nonstandard term programs, Regent allows a student to change the per-Payment-Period loan amounts and packaging philosophies for each term. Regent Award still awards loans using the selected Packaging Philosophy. The student's per-term Packaging Philosophy choices are used to help set per-PP amounts in each term. 'My Borrowing' encourages students to borrow less in loan debt by providing a user-friendly way for students to borrow less than their total Cost of Attendance. For example, in My Borrowing, a student may choose to package loans to Direct Costs only - covering institutional charges such as Tuition and Fees.  In order to further encourage responsible borrowing, schools may give students the flexibility to choose a different borrowing level in each term or payment period during an Academic Year. For example, in a three-term AY, a student might borrow to their Full COA for the first term; to Direct Costs only for the second term; and continue Direct Costs again in the third term. 

Packaging Loans Per Payment Period

'My Borrowing' allows students to make borrowing decisions for per-term or per-PP. Students can decide, for each term or payment period level, whether to borrow enough to meet just Direct Costs for that term or PP, or whether to borrow the maximum available to them.

The per-PP packaging allows a student to borrow amounts in different terms in an AY.  For example, in a three-term AY, a student might borrow to their Full COA for the first term; to Direct Costs only for the second term; and continue Direct Costs again in the third term. 

With 'Change My Borrowing',  a school may optionally configure Federal loan funds using the "Repackaging Option for Changes to Packaging Philosophy" setting in Fund Setup Data Elements. If that setting is enabled, then Regent Award will repackage the fund according to two separate targets:

• Loan Period amount; and

• Per-term or per-PP amount

The Loan Period amount accounts for the total COA and total packaged aid in the Loan Period. The per-term or per-PP amount is a constraint to potentially change amounts on a per-PP basis.

Packaging Using Actual (Calculated) Loan Fees

When the ‘Package Using Actual Loan Fees’ setting in Institution/Campus Setup is enabled, Regent will calculate fees for Title IV loans during packaging instead of using configured flat loan fee amounts from Fund Fee Setup, per the Appropriations Act of 2021. This packaging logic is effective for students with AY Start Dates on or after the configured date in the ‘AY Start Date for Package Using Actual Loan Fees’ field in Institution/Campus Setup. Calculated fees will be shown as Loan Fees in Cost of Attendance in Regent and the student portal.

The ‘Package Using Actual Loan Fees’ methodology ensures that fees are included in the eligible award amount.

1. The process calculates each Federal Direct Loan (i.e. Direct Subsidized Loan, Direct Unsubsidized Loan, Direct PLUS Loan, and Direct Graduate PLUS) amount individually in Packaging Philosophy order using a Cost of Attendance limitation that does not include system-generated loan fees.

2. The following check is performed to determine if an iterative packaging method is required:

   1. If the Gross Federal Direct Loan amount is not subject to a reduction due to the COA limitation, the Gross Federal Direct Loan amount is finalized and no additional calculations are performed.

   2. If the Gross Federal Direct Loan amount is reduced due to the COA limitation during the Packaging process, an iterative packaging method is then performed:

      1. Each Federal Direct Loan is packaged in the Packaging Philosophy order.

      2. Loan fees are calculated for each eligible Federal Direct Loan amount and added back into the COA limitation.

      3. Steps 2bi and 2bii are repeated until each Gross Federal Direct Loan amount is maximized using the COA limitation with loan fees.

Regent will automatically create cost items for the calculated loan fees.