Introduction

This Business Process Analysis (BPA) and System Configuration document describes the functionality and configuration settings related to Cost of Attendance (COA) in Regent Award. 

This page defines the following associated with COA:

• Frequency, Cost Methods, Calculating Cost, and Cost Adjustments

• Specifications for configuration of the following:

  • Data requirements

  • Communication

  • User Roles

  • Documents

  • Tasks

  • Additional Configuration

Process Overview

This section describes the default behavior of Regent Award processes associated with COA.

Regent Award calculates a student’s Cost of Attendance (COA) based on configured cost items (or system-created cost items for calculated fees when ‘Package Using Actual Loan Fees’ is enabled) and filters along with student-specific criteria from the student’s ISIR and course information provided by the SBL. Dependency and housing status is captured from ISIR information. Program, enrollment, residency, and other student-specific criteria are captured from information provided via the SBL. 

A student’s COA includes costs for actual enrollment in the current payment period and anticipated enrollment in future payment periods. Because each student could have variances such as: 1) units attempted per payment period, 2) housing status, 3) dependency status, and 4) program of study, each student may have a different calculated COA.

Regent Award allows for configuration of cost groups that apply to Federal and Institutional cost categories.  Cost groups are applied to specific sites and programs. Each cost group has an effective start and end date, allowing for the creation of cost increases that may take effect on a given day.

When Cost Setup is created, Regent automatically adds a read-only cost group for loan fees that are calculated by Regent when when ‘Package Using Actual Loan Fees’ is enabled.

Cost items can be configured to calculate based on a per unit or enrollment level and take only program applicable courses into consideration when determining the number of units in which a student is enrolled.  Durational cost items will be calculated only on the time of actual enrollment. For example, a student enrolled in one 8-week module in a term will receive only 8-weeks of room and board, personal, and transportation expenses.

COA Frequency

Cost frequency determines how often to apply a cost. The effective date for the cost item assigned to the cost group is dependent upon the cost frequency. For example, a 17-18 Undergraduate Tuition and a 18-19 Undergraduate Tuition. When the current date equals the cost group’s effective date, the new COA amount will take effect on the student’s payment period start date.

Cost frequency options include:

Cost Method and COA Restrictions

Cost methods include both durational and instructional cost calculations.

• Durational cost calculations count each day in the period including student and institutional breaks. 

• Instructional cost calculations count each week in the period in which there is at least one instructional day excluding student and institutional breaks.

Regent Award can be configured with COA restrictions to exclude personal expense and room and board for students who are enrolled less than half time as well as transportation for online programs.

Calculating and Freezing COA

Term Programs

Regent Award provides three options for freezing the COA for a term payment period. These options center around determining the correct enrollment level to use for the COA. This configuration allows for:

• Freeze at start of term – This option stops recalculating the student’s COA at the term start date. If cost items have been configured to use enrollment units or enrollment level, these items will not be recalculated when enrollment changes.

• Freeze at end of term – This option allows cost to be recalculated until the last day of the term.  If cost items have been configured to use enrollment units or enrollment level, these items will be recalculated with enrollment changes even though census units are locked.

• Use Census units – This option continues to recalculate costs until Census units are determined.  If cost items have been configured to use enrollment units or enrollment level, these items are not recalculated after Census.

Maintaining Tuition Costs for Withdrawn Courses

Schools can configure Regent Award with an alternative method of calculating per unit Cost Items to allow for term-based programs to always include attended program applicable withdrawn courses in the Cost of Attendance for cost items using units. When configured, Regent Award includes attended, Program Applicable (PA), withdrawn courses when calculating the costs for per unit Cost Items (even if the student withdrew from the course during the payment period). The PA courses count towards COA when the course's enrolled date is prior to the configured COA freeze date and the course’s Attended flag is ‘true’.

This does not apply to the enrollment level calculations, remedial disqualified units, repeat disqualified units, cumulative unit filters on the Cost Item Setup, or per course Cost Items.

This is only applicable for term and Non-Standard Term (NST) based programs except for BBAY3 NST.

Modular Programs

Modules affect cost items configured as durational (weekly/ monthly) costs. When a student enrolls in a modular course (one that does not span all instructional weeks in a term), Regent Award adjusts the cost for the weeks of enrollment. For cost items that are configured on a ‘per term’ basis, e.g. flat rate cost per term, Regent Award calculates the weeks of enrollment and corresponding cost for the term using the following formula: [weeks enrolled / (4.345 weeks / month * months / term)] * cost item amount = cost applied

Nonterm Programs

Regent Award provides 4 options for freezing the cost of attendance for a nonterm payment period.  These options are centered around how the nonterm payment period is treated for slow progression.  This configuration allows for:

• freezing non-durational items

• freezing durational items

• freezing both

• freezing neither

These COA items should not be frozen while a student's Academic Plan is "Anticipated."

When the option to freeze non-durational items is selected, the student’s non-durational cost items, e.g. tuition, fees, books, are locked once actual enrollment is submitted via the SBL.   If a student were to fail a course and need to take an additional course to complete the payment period, the cost would not adjust to compensate for the additional course. 

When the option to freeze durational items is selected, the student’s durational cost items, e.g. room and board, personal, and transportation, are locked at the start of the payment period and the student is anticipated to progress on pace.  If a student were to withdraw from a course with attendance and need additional weeks to complete the payment period, the cost would not adjust to compensate for the additional weeks.

Special Costs and Effective Dates

A cost configured to be provided via a UDF may be accompanied by effective dates so that the cost item can be aligned to a specified payment period.  This is useful in adding cost adjustments for large course fees.

One-time fees can be applied at specific points in time to the student’s COA. 

Per Course Items

Cost items configured to be applied once per enrolled course is applied to each course that is:

• program applicable,

• not a transfer course,

• withdrawn with attendance,

• enrolled prior to census (for term-based programs).

Courses provided on the SBL with 0 units may also qualify for a per course cost.

Nonterm programs with configured per course costs use the configured courses for anticipation setting.  This allows Regent Award to determine the estimated number courses for the student in anticipated payment periods, prior to enrollment being sent in the SBL.  This is setup at the institution level as a default but can be overridden by specific program configuration settings.

Cost Discounts

A cost item can be configured to be a negative amount.  This allows for cost discounts based on specific student criteria.  Typically, this is a configured to be provided via a UDF in the SBL. 

Cost Adjustments

Regent Award provides packaging rules for Federal funds that ensure appropriate funding based on a student’s grade level, enrollment level, and cost of attendance. When a manual cost adjustment is required, the User can make a positive or negative cost adjustment from the awards tab using the Cost Adjustment Wizard. The cost adjustment must be associated to one of the Federal cost categories and applied to selected payment periods. The cost item appears in the cost of attendance under the associated cost category. 

Open

Open

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE COST ADJUSTMENT IN TWO DIFFERENT Payment Period

After making a cost adjustment, the packaging engine will consider the adjusted COA calculation for all payment periods in which the cost adjustment was applied and make revisions upward or downward where applicable for Federal funds.

Cost adjustments can also be provided to Regent Award on the SBL via User Defined Fields.

Pell COA

Regent Award provides schools with the ability to establish a Pell COA. The Pell COA is based on the Full-time and Less-than-half-time costs for On-campus, With Parents, and Off-campus housing statuses for each FAY for the associated programs. Regent Award will use the ISIR housing status values and configured costs to package Pell and properly report the Pell COA value to COD.  Schools can configure unique Pell COA values for specific programs (e.g. an exclusive Pell COA is required for certificate programs verses associate programs).

Pell COA Overrides

The Pell COA Override wizard allows users with appropriate permissions to override the Pell COA at the Payment Period or FAY level for an individual student.

When an override to the Payment Period or FAY data is added, and the student's enrollment level or housing status changes, the override values will be used instead of the values from Pell COA setup.  The override values will be reported to COD. If any data point in the wizard is not provided, Regent Award will revert to the specific values configured in the Pell COA setup for the student's program.

 Configuration

 The initial configuration of costs will be configured by Regent Education and subsequently maintained by the school post go-live.

Configuration Template

Data Requirements

There is no data integration required for Cost setup.

Communications Template

There are no Communications related to Cost of Attendance.

Users & Roles Template

Refer to the [Client]_UserRoles_Setup_Template for configuration details related to Cost of Attendance permissions.

Documents Template

There are no Documents related to Cost of Attendance.

Tasks Template

There are no Tasks related to Cost of Attendance.

COA Template

Refer to the school’s COA_Setup_Template for configuration details related to Cost of Attendance.

Pell COA Template

Refer to the school’s Pell_COA_Setup_Template for configuration details related to Pell Cost of Attendance. 

Additional Configuration

Institutional Cost

The institution setup in Regent Award is configured with default setting for the costs (most frequent) offered by the institution. Refer to the school’s EnterpriseSetup_Template for default setting selected by the school.

 Default Cost Setup

Regent Award is configured with one default cost setup for the school. The default cost setup is configured with cost groups associated to Federal and Institutional cost categories relevant to the effective date range, sites, and programs.