Degree Partnership Programs & Financial Aid

Presenter:

Rebecca Martinez

Associate Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships,

Oregon State University

Financial Aid Issues

• Financial Aid Consortium Agreements – purpose• Required by USED to ensure compliance with

regulations• Must determine “home school” for financial aid

purposes• Definition of “home school” varies

• Once the aid paying school is determined (HOME school), each partner must set up their systems appropriately

Enrollment Information Sharing

• Level of enrollment• Student Status Confirmation Report (SSCR)• Withdrawals/ R2T4/ Last Date of Attendance• End of Term grades/credits (SAP)• Monitoring for aid-eligible courses• Institutional policies and deadlines for drops, adds, receiving

W’s, • **ESTABLISH TIMELINES FOR SHARING**

Academic Calendars

• Challenges of degree partnership programs:• Academic calendars not in synch

– Start and end dates of terms– Quarter hour calendar vs. semester calendar– Registration dates– Fee payment– Financial aid disbursement

Why do this?

• Schools would manually look at credits and decide which school would disburse aid.

OLDE PROCESS

• Sometime later, we decided to let the student decide (within parameters) which school would be the home school and disburse aid.

• Still a paper process and part of the paper Admissions process.

Then we invented the wheel..We used TECHNOLOGY!!

Initial Home School Process

• Send email to students explaining HOME school parameters

• Provide link to online questionnaire for home school declaration

Online Questionnaire

Methods of Data Sharing

THEN• Mail /fax data/ email

• Staff access to partner institution data base NOW• OFAX – electronic file for financial aid

OFAXOFAX Oregon Financial Aid Exchange Oregon Financial Aid Exchange

• Multiple-enrollment data exchange for financial aid purposes

• Participating schools send in their data via a secure web site

• OFAX server processes file – Return matching records sent in by other

schools via password protected email attachment

What do we want to do with the data once we have it?

• Combine, as appropriate, with OSU data to process student’s financial aid with concurrent enrollment information of courses, credits and grades.

OSU’s OFAX Data Form

To infinity and beyond • Advances in technology

• Single billing

• Statewide agreement

• Quarters/Semesters

• Maintaining human element in a more globalized learning environment.

-Buzz Lightyear