Release 5.2.0.0 (Regent 5.2) FAQ

Can anyone take Regent 5.2?  

All Regent Award and Regent Access clients are expected to take Regent 5.2 for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.  Clients wishing to use the 'What if I Change My Course Enrollment' feature will need to have active Regent Plan licenses. Production Upgrades are coordinated with Account Managers.  Regent Review clients may also take the 5.2 Release.

What is included in Regent 5.2?

This release addresses product defects as listed in the “Bugs” section of the Release Notes, and also enhancements and new features including:

• Introduction of ‘What If I Change My Course Enrollment’ Tool for Regent Plan

• Option for Passive Acceptance Students to Decline/Reduce Loan Amounts

• Regent Access Questionnaires for 2021-2022

• Option to Add Federal Work Study from Two Federal Years in a Crossover Payment Period

• Ability to Start Nonterm Academic Plan with Program B when Student did not Attend Program A

How do my students benefit from access to the 'What if I Change My Course Enrollment' feature?

This new addition to our Regent Plan suite of tools will give student the opportunity to see how a change in course enrollment level, such as from Full-Time to Half-Time will affect the length of time to program completion, their financial aid estimates for the rest of the program, and their total estimated indebtedness for Direct Loans at the end of the program.  Changes can be made for the remainder of the program, or the student can elect to make changes on a term-by-term basis to see how it may affect their academic and financial future. Each simulation will result in a side by side comparison of current vs future state on key variables, and the student will be able to name and save the estimate for future reference.  An informed student is likely to make better decisions about their education.

Please note: For successful implementation of this new feature, sufficient terms must be configured within Regent Award to support a student's plan through to completion with low course registration each term.

Where do students access the 'What if I Change My Course Enrollment' feature?

When enabled, a student can access the 'What if I Change My Course Enrollment' feature under the “My Plan” menu option in Student Experience....

Will student 'What if I Change My Course Enrollment' decisions persist into Regent Award?

This tool provides purely hypothetical results, as the system of record for course enrollment is outside of Regent.  Students indicate either the number of units (credits) or the number of courses for each term and are provided with a plan showing an extrapolated program length and estimated awards.  While they can name and save these plans for future reference within My Plan, they are not selecting specific courses and their entries are not persisted into Regent Award and will affect neither their Regent Academic Plan nor their financial aid awards.  Clients configure an introductory section at the top of the tool to provide specific cautions and guidance as are most appropriate for their students.

How do I get access to Regent Plan features?

Contact your client account manager for information about licensing Regent Plan.  Clients with Regent Plan will have permissioned access to configuration screens for Regent Plan, including My Borrowing and What If I Change My Course Enrollment?

The 2021-2022 EFC calculations are in Regent 5.2, does this mean I can start processing 2021-2022 ISIRs?

The new EFC calculations are available to Regent Access in this release.  Our regular Fall Regulatory Release will provide full 2021-2022 ISIR processing for Regent Review and Regent Award clients.

How should I configure the new ‘Allow Students to Accept Lower Amounts or Decline Awards from the Student Portal’ option?

This configuration applies to all Title IV loans in Student Experience and My Borrowing. For clarity, in Regent Award an award is considered to be Active flow if it is first created in Offered status, and Passive flow if it is first created in Accepted status.  The default for this new configuration option is ‘No’ in order to preserve current functionality for Passive awards, meaning that students cannot adjust them via the Student Experience Financial Aid module or My Borrowing.  Configure as ‘Yes’ if:

• If you are currently using My Borrowing, regardless of whether you are using Active or Passive flow for your Direct Loans. 
• If you are not using My Borrowing and you want your students to be able to reduce and decline Passive flow loans in the Financial Aid module.

Note: Please ensure you configure both Subsidized and Unsubsidized Direct Loans with the same option.  We also recommend you configure GradPLUS loans to match the Subsidized/Unsubsidized flow so the student has a consistent experience.

Will any Student Batch Loan (SBL) changes be needed to support the new treatment of External Transfer Units?

Yes, in some cases.  The new logic supports inserting External Transfer Units at desired points throughout a student’s Academic Plan, rather than assuming all External Transfer Units were earned before the student enrolled in the program at your institution as in prior releases.  Beginning with 5.2.0.0:

• If the external transfer course’s Course End Date is before or on the Program Start Date, the units will be treated as earned prior to program start date.  If all your external transfer units are being sent this way already and if you want them all to be treated as earned prior to the Program Start Date, no SBL changes are needed.
• If the external transfer course’s Course End Date is after the Program Start Date and this is a term-based program, the units will be considered as earned during the term specified with External Term ID in the SBL record.  The units will be applied to the grade level calculation for the next term. You may need to update your SBL logic to reflect this usage.
• If the external transfer course’s Course End Date is after the Program Start Date and this is a nonterm program, the units will be considered as earned during the payment period that contains the Course End Date.  The units will be applied to the grade level calculation for the next academic year. You may need to update your SBL logic to reflect this usage.

We understand there is existing External Transfer Unit course data in production that follows several different end date patterns, so implementation of this new logic could have unintended consequences for existing Academic Plans.    Thus, the new logic will not be implemented until November 1^st, 2020 regardless of your upgrade date to 5.2.0.0.  This means that any external transfer courses created via SBL on or after November 1^st will use the new logic rather than assuming the units are to be applied from the beginning of the program.   If you wish to implement sooner than November 1^st, please notify your Account Manager to have the  External Transfer Effective As Of Date moved up in your system.  If you wish to continue using the legacy logic for more time while you make changes to your SBL, please notify your Account Manager to push back that date to accommodate your needs.  There is no requirement to implement the new logic, so you can request that the External Transfer Effective As Of Date be pushed to a far distant future date.  New client implementations will be configured to support the new logic at upgrade.

SBL documentation has been updated to reflect the new functionality.