Elise Miller: Again, good afternoon. I`m Elise Miller and I am part of
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1. customize what we do maybe you just wanna make a few adjustments Um it ll give it ll be very transparent and easy to do that way The other question we ask is whether you re an academic or a program reporter Does any in the anyone in the room um think that they are a know that they are a program reporter Okay Good So let me just explain the concept briefly since we have a few in Basically um some institutions charge completely by the program So when we collect data for instance in IPEDS instead of saying what s your academic year tuition perhaps it s a four month program and they charge just a price for that four month program So there s really nothing the concept of academic year is foreign to that type of school Page 5 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 6 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com So what we do in IPEDS since they have multiple programs that might have multiple prices you might have a you know 4 month program you might have an 18 month program Um we collect information on their six largest programs but for the purpose of this um calculator we have um done it for the largest program So that largest program your school reports to IPEDS if you re a program reporter will also be what will be you ll be using in this um net price calculator So now we don t want you to have to enter data that isn t relevant to your institution2. VAE_FSA_24 Page 11 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com Or do you have one already in house that you ve been using Not necessarily not price calculator but a financial aid calculator or a financial aid estimator perhaps it s something you wanna adjust to meet this requirement and not start from scratch Or maybe you do want to start from scratch and use this look up table approach or you wanna start from scratch and do something completely different As long as it has the minimum set of data elements that we have in our template um then it meets the requirement So the minimum required elements The input elements have to include data elements that help to approximate the student s EFC such as we did So we included income number in family and um information to determine dependency status So basically we re saying you need to be basing this on some sort of EFC approximation Now if you offer merit aid you ll wanna have likely more inputs that are related to what merit aid you offer Another question that s come up is whether you have to use federal methodology or institutional methodology to approximate an EFC You can use either Now this is the output This is the other set of data elements you have to have in your calculator And basically it s what you saw on our output screen So it s that price of attendance information broken down by tuition fees room and board
3. We wanna customize our application as much as possible too So there are a few screening questions here to limit the number of cells you will see in the tables to follow So we ask about whether you have on campus housing If you don t then you shouldn t need to enter information on that uh price uh or cost of attendance We also ask following that if you have on campus housing well do all students are they all first time full time students living on campus then you don t need to answer questions about off campus living Um then also we ask about in state out of state in district you know you don t wanna have to answer if you re a private institution you don t have in state out of state different prices so therefore you wouldn t have to enter different information for those So after we get an idea of what kind of data is relevant to your institution we produce tables for you to actually input the data And this will take some time it s not gonna because you have to look some of it up The cost of attendance is fairly basic it s information that s pretty readily available again it s already reported to IPEDS It s basically just your in state out of state tuition fees book supplies room and board other based on the student budget and as reported to IPEDS Now the sorta new and different thing is this these median grant amounts So I m sorry this is small um but there are about let s se
4. books and supplies other expenses It s that total grant aid amount If you wanted to break that down by merit versus need or by a scholarship name or something like that you could but you have to have that total amount there And then the estimated net price cost of attendance minus the grant aid amount We ve also asked that you include the percent of the cohort first time full time students that received that aid So what does that mean Well if you have a low population of first time full time students who are represented in this calculation we want users to know that So let s say only 10 percent of your students are first time full time then this percentage would say that This applied to 10 percent of our students So now you can do some things in your calculator to also give numbers to the other 90 percent of your students That s okay as long as it has this minimum set of data elements And you do need to have at least something for first time full time students And finally there s those required caveats that are written into the law that you have to have Explanations for this not being a final say in what you will be paying So you have to at least have that disclaimer on it as well So when you re thinking about what to do Page 11 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 12 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com at your institutions here are some of the questions We ve
5. by the hours Let s say we are a program ___ uh we have 1 000 let s say we have 1 350 hours in our program will it calculate for all 1 350 Right So for the department s template we are not calculating the aid you are calculating the aid and you re filling it in by EFC ranges and it is not if you re doing it by a program you re doing it for the entire program So it will output information to the student on how many average hours it takes to complete that program I mean average months and it will also show information on how many contact or credit hours um if you re doing a program reporting style calculator however if you re doing an academic year style we don t and I encourage you if there s specific information on number of credit hours and such you d wanna put that in the caveat box Yeah Yeah Next question Maybe come to the microphone I m just gonna have to repeat it otherwise and I might not you know get it as accurately as you can Okay Our institution has both academic and program so do we have to have two separate calculators can we choose selections in the calculator process that would the student would kinda go down this path if they were in a uh academic calendar versus this class if they were this path if they were in a uh clock hour program Page 15 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 16 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Elise Miller Male 3
6. calculator takes a collaboration of institutional research offices and financial aid offices and so we ve been trying to come to audiences such as yourself We go to the institutional researchers meetings as well and we talk to them about how they might need to work together to meet the requirement We also brought them all around the table to actually figure out how we might be able to do this The goal at that meeting in January 2009 was to keep it simple As you know there s over 6800 title 4 institutions 6800 different schools out there and as you know I bet if you look to the left and the right of you you ll find someone sitting next to an institution that might seem similar on the surface but is actually very different from you And trying to come up with a single template that works for every type of institution is difficult So we really tried to keep it simple Page 3 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 4 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com For instance nothing in this um collects information that might be used to determine merit aid at your institution partly because we don t know what you use to determine merit aid at your institution Um some institutions might use GPA others might use other factors and if we built an element in that says you have to collect high school GPA then every institution would have to use that in their calculator regardless of whether or no
7. how many of you did any of you attend the session last year that I did in Nashville Okay great Um I don t know if there s new information here I think there is new information In addition we ve just been able to refine some of the information so we can communicate it better So I m glad you re back this year Quickly on the agenda we re gonna give background we re gonna present what the Department of Education and specifically um we at NCS developed as a calculator that you can use if you don t wanna develop your own We re gonna talk about give you some ideas of things you should be thinking about The requirement is coming closer this year it s October 2011 when you re gonna need to have these on your websites So last year we had some breathing room but it s you know it s less than a year now We ll talk about some resources that are out there and already available to you And then briefly just touch on some of the frequently asked questions that we ve gotten um since we uh released the well actually since HEOA was passed with this requirement in it And just so you know um last year I tried to gather people s business cards with questions on them that I could get back to later and answer and that proved to be a bear So um I encourage you to e mail me any questions that we don t get Page 1 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 2 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www
8. sense for your region and institution More questions No I think that means we re we get out a little early So uh thank you guys very much Again here s my e mail Page 20 of 20
9. talked a lot to IR folks We ve talked a lot to financial aid folks These are some of the stuff that are coming in as frequently asked questions Things you wanna think about um you know uh scholarships state grants you know maybe there s a state grant that applies to everyone from in state How maybe you wanna do something different to apply that Also what if you do have differential pricing by different programs As we said you can stick ina caveat doesn t apply to engineering students or something like that but what if there s a whole bunch Should you be doing a calculator that customizes to that level by program Other things that you might wanna take into consideration is the number of credits the room and board plans perhaps you have different room and board plans different credits You can stick in the caveats that this applies to this room and board plan this many meals You can stick this applies to this many credit hours Or you can try to customize it to a point where it would tell them based on those things It starts getting really um busy though at that point Um here are some other things you might wanna take into account I think we ve covered most of them throughout the presentation however You might also wanna highlight that this only applies to undergraduates those first time full time students it wouldn t apply to graduate students or part time students or transfer students Just think about al
10. to do you can do it just make sure everything is labeled correctly So you might have to make some changes in the calculator if you re using the template to make sure it shows the correct uh year that you re outputting Um but that is something you can do um Page 17 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 18 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Male 4 Elise Miller Male 5 Elise Miller Male 5 Elise Miller Male 5 Elise Miller www verbalink com you ll just make be careful about how display the information and things like that Okay So it doesn t have to tie directly to IPEDS We d be okay For the if this will not align directly to IPEDS um actually so yeah Yeah I just had the same question and I I think you just answered it but we re we re hoping to expand our existing calculator that we use uh to to also cover these requirements Um and we tried to set it up so that it s doing our institutional methodology formula for the upcoming year um and we wouldn t have IPEDS data of course for the upcoming year So is it permissible to use the most recent data we have Okay Yeah I should clarify this You need to make sure you re aligning your it has to be the same year for your cost of attendance data and your aid data So if your institution hasn t determined its cost of attendance for the next year then you can t be updating your aid
11. uh were able to get a template out there on October 29 2009 Um you can access it both through the IPEDS website and also through um the OPE website where there s HEOA updates But here s the thing you do not have to use the department s version and so if you don t like it I understand We ll talk a bit more about why it is the way it is and how you might wanna change it But um you also have the option of developing your own calculator or starting with our calculator and maybe doing a modified version that best suits your campus So just to give you a little of the background that came out of the actual legislation and the purpose is to help current and perspective students families and other consumers estimate the individual net price of the institution of higher education So as you know from filling out IPEDS last year we re also calculating a few net prices to be put on the college navigator website but those are really really um at a high level and not very detailed and might not tell a student based on who they are what they would be likely to pay Now the purpose here is to give a more individualized net price Page 2 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 3 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com than one would get off the college navigator which is where we display data that s reported to IPEDS That being said we know that it s a very difficult thing to do to give a precis
12. verbalink com answered today and that way we can update the frequently asked questions and share that information not just with this crowd but with all the eight administrators out there who are interested in that information So you re very familiar with HEOA I m sure Higher Education Opportunity Act signed into law in 2008 Um it includes includes many disclosure requirements um and that s what we consider the net price calculator requirement And we distinguish a disclosure requirement as something that you need to disclose to students or some other parties on your campus from a reporting requirement which is IPEDS something that you actually have to report to us at the department Okay So this is something that you need to have on your websites to disclose to students information about net price Now um I do wanna highlight here that the law defines net price as being the price uh after grant aid for first time full time students so if you have no first time full time students you can leave the room now No Laughter Um but seriously that s a question that s come up a lot It does define it for first time full time students so you re not required to do it if you don t have those students but that doesn t stop you from doing it either So as I mentioned earlier the deadline is fast approaching because you have two years from when we released our template to actually get a calculator live on your website We
13. Elise Miller Male 3 Elise Miller Female Elise Miller Female www verbalink com Yeah At this point using um our template it s not designed for it s it s either or So um if you wanted to create you know multiple calculators you could use the template twice one for academic and one for program or programs you know several for programs and then you could add screening questions to point them to the right calculator But it s not set up right now to facilitate that within the uh template itself But there s a front interface you could build to customize that to point them and then it would be easy to create those two different calculators using our template So that would that would be one way of customizing it on your campus And again in your template the verbiage is is editable so we can we can change that as needed because there s some pieces that I saw there that that again I think aren t really clear could be clear to students So we can change any part of that Well you you need to leave the caveat the same that s taken out of the law and I think the labeling of things like tuition fees and things like that are fairly clear Um so I m not sure on the output screens what verbiage but you are free to add and you can go in to the code of the um of the actual application and add additional verbiage that would help clarify terms that you don t think are as
14. VAE_FSA_24 Page 1 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Elise Miller www verbalink com Again good afternoon I m Elise Miller and I am part of what is the National Center for Education Statistics Now that s part of the Department of Education so I know you deal mostly with federal student aid which is another part but we are um the NCS portion and you might know me as the IPEDS person so I am the program director oh I heard that Laughter Yeah That s me Uh I m that evil one Um I am program director for IPEDS which means I oversee that data collection and I know that every year you get these forms and you get very frustrated with me So I encourage you to go to the other session that we have set up here where our uh survey director for IPEDS will be here giving details on submitting the data cause I know it was a bear last year There s a lot of changes so that we could get some net price information And um Archie s gonna do a great job explaining all that to you Um again I uh I hope you all got something to eat I waited in a a line for half an hour or for like an hour and at 1 15 realized there was no way I was gonna eat so I ran back over here and I look like I ve been at the gym but I have not So I m sorry about if I look sweaty Um but thank goodness we re here in Orlando where it s so beautiful All right Let s get under way Un first of all
15. You can use either Can you ask for more inputs Yes you can And my only sort of caveat with that is just beware that the more you re asking the more intimidating it can get after a while So um as we know there it can get really complex So what we try to do at the department is balance the complexity with um making it user friendly and something that would give them some new information that they didn t have before without um scaring them off by the level of detail of questions we asked Can the final net price be a range Um our template uh produces a single number you can do a range as long as it is specific to those characteristics of students who um are similar to the user based on the inputs Um and the ultimate question is when are you going to get your next round of data out And um yeah As I promised I will do whatever it takes to get it to you and on our website by the end of the calendar year The data file is literally in my inbox right now so as soon as I get back next week we will be working on making it happen And we again are gonna release other information an improved user guide um an improved data files and information that will help you um meet this requirement by October Here s my contact information and again see we ve got plenty of time for questions So I ll take as many as we as many as you have today and then if you have additional ones when you get back to your campus you can e m
16. ail them either to me or to Archie who is my colleague doing the IPEDS presentation here And we will get back to you and we appreciate you sending them to us because then we add them to the frequently asked questions website and others can learn from your questions as well So do we have questions Yes Hi I ll talk loud um you mentioned about customizing it so it s not jargony for the kids to understand it Does that imply to the term net price itself We re concerned that net price may be misleading for our students Page 14 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 15 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Elise Miller Male 1 Elise Miller Male 2 Elise Miller Male 2 Elise Miller Male 3 www verbalink com Yeah You can add additional language to explain that I think you need to keep net price in there but definitely you could add something that explains what that is I understand that that s a new term It s new to many people Does it need to be in the title of the site You don t have to call it the net price calculator I think I think it needs to be in there somewhere but you can have further information as well When ____ ____ calculator ___ template uh if a program has 1 350 hours does that Um let s have you come to the microphone and ask again Cause I m gonna have you repeat it anyway and that way other people can hear Is the aid calculated
17. at to work with the calculator So yes When new data comes available from the FAFSA files so that we can update those EFCs we will then post the new template based on that data and then you would need to go back in and provide new data on grant and cost of attendance amounts for that new data year Okay Just one other follow up that s probably more complicated in that you don t want to maybe consider it but any thoughts of getting the EFC range based on the school code or region of the country in terms of uh what that yielded rather than just I m assuming uh a national average based on 20 000 00 to Page 19 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 20 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Elise Miller End of Audio www verbalink com 30 000 00 of income Cause it could shape could vary based on the population of that state or the nature of you know prevalent industry or like a farm communities that exclude assets et cetera It would make it more accurate but of course that would complicate your end of the bargain by customizing a little bit more Yeah That that s not something we re gonna be doing and it s just as you said there are many many factors that could go into this and we tried to keep it simple and something that would broadly work for folks So again you have the option of customizing things at the institutional level that could be based on things that make most
18. clear Thank you Sure You mentioned that there would be a requirement to update the information Is there a set calendar for when that will happen Of if there isn t how will we be notified to stay in compliance for that Yeah We um I I d love to get some feedback from you guys cause your we will be notifying um I have all your IPEDS people s uh e mail addresses So we ll definitely be getting word out through that and through NASFA but if you have a suggestion of another way to notify you directly um that would be great uh to hear And we will be hopefully getting these updated annually in October Obviously getting the data this year has been difficult but hopefully that s a first time uh update thing and then in the future we ll be shooting to get it done in October Okay They said one thing with and maybe it refers to what you were the gentleman before me was asking when it comes to Page 16 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 17 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Elise Miller Male 3 Female Elise Miller Male 3 Elise Miller Male 3 Elise Miller Male 4 Elise Miller www verbalink com modifying the questions for example with the question about do you have children on the user side of it it would be much clearer to my students if it said do you have children that you financially support Rather than do you have d
19. dian grant amount that you as the institutional person entered into our application and it subtracts cost of attendance minus that median grant amount We ll see some more to make sense of that So again if you want to write down the website but if you easily go to search for IPEDS on Google you ll be able to click right there go to IPEDS and it s under resources Very easy to find Again I encourage you to start out by printing out that PDF that help menu Some of the questions that ll come up for you will be in there We ve tried to include screenshots in there so you can see what you will be facing as you walk through the application We re gonna add some features along the way as well Um we should be launching a new version of this and it doesn t change the basics in it it just makes it easier to use and updates the data So step one once you get into the application is to decide what year Now we are um waiting now to do 2009 10 I just got the data file this morning so hopefully we will be able to release the template with that data um within the next few weeks I promise it before the end of the calendar year So they ll have 2008 09 and 09 10 We ve also had a lot of requests for the data tables we used behind the scenes related to EFC which I ll show you a preview of later We ll be releasing all that information so you ll have all that at your disposal which will help if you decide to customize it and give um
20. e 12 ranges over there on the left side hand side of EFC ranges First is zero EFC being at the bottom and then at the or at the top and at the very bottom is actually non FAFSA filers because um we want not everyone files a FAFSA they could still use this We would assume in our template that they wouldn t get aid since ours is based on basically EFC which you wouldn t know And there s ranges all between So then you have a number of boxes that align with the boxes you had in your tuition and cost of attendance table So you would calculate for instance the EFC the median EFC I m sorry the median grant amount for Page 6 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 7 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com someone who had a zero EFC who lived on campus and was from in state That s box number one Okay So this will take some time Now we also wanted to give you the opportunity cause we heard a lot from the community of concerns that this data might be misinterpreted that students might walk in and say okay this is what I m gonna pay Um we know that that is not the case and we wanted to do whatever we could to accommodate those concerns There are a set of explanations and caveats that the law required we put in there and I think they re good They say things like the department the secretary of education FSA the state the institution are not promis
21. e Institutions have the option to add additional questions that will give more precise estimates at their institutions But this is the set um that we are using to do an approximated EFC as well as sort of an estimated dependency status You know that there are a lot of factors that can go in to dependency status and you if you put that in front of a student they d probably get confused really quickly and it might they might not finish using the application So we really limited it to just some bare minimum questions that still gets us to a place where we can approximate these things First question Are you gonna apply for financial aid If no well then they go into that non FAFSA file or category and they don t really need to figure out the rest of the questions Next question Age That age is simply being used to try to figure out their dependency Now we could say are you dependent or independent But the information we have gotten back is often students don t know So we took in some characteristics that would help us determine that because sometimes that language just doesn t make sense to them So if they re 24 or older they are just automatic we put them in the independent category Next we ask if they plan to live on campus or off campus or off campus with family so that we can determine the correct cost of attendance to use in doing the calculations We also ask um whether they will be pay plan to be payin
22. e estimate to a student of what they should pay So one thing we really really wanna do is get beyond sticker price because so often it is still the sticker price that folks focus on as what they would have to pay to go to a college So this is really the first time we re saying really push out there what they re gonna be paying after grant aid so they understand that the sticker price is not necessarily what um will be coming out of their pockets Just a quick overview of how the law itself defines net price Again it s for first time full time students That doesn t mean you can t add features to an individualized calculator if you customize it on your campus to do it for other types of students as well But at a minimum you need to calculate it for first time full time students if you enroll them And basically um we re gonna change the language in our template We ve been calling it price of attendance that s what we call it on IPEDS so we were trying to be consistent but we understand that cost of attendance um resonates with more people in financial aid world so we are gonna switch up that language So it s really cost of attendance minus um both merit and need based grant aid and it s the median amount that is awarded to the students So we didn t just develop this on our own we actually enlisted a lot of experts from the higher ED community What we have really seen is that this um new effort with the net price
23. ependent That s exactly where I was going Yeah That type of thing It s it s the same example for when you ask a student did you file taxes The number one response is no I didn t get a refund back from the government So it s sometimes those those those that like you said the verbiage to make it friendlier to them Yeah You could customize that for sure I think we said do you have children that are dependent and you re right I just said that dependent independent doesn t make much sense to people So that s a good point ___ have children Yeah You need to clarify that you support the children Yeah So that is something and it could be in the next version you would see that clarified as you just suggested as well Yeah In the input information uh in using median for prior year data instead of using prior year if you know there s a change in the Pell grant schedule or in your institutional packaging policy on grant instead of inputting prior year is it permissible to do estimated upcoming year for the grants Yeah We we did it on prior year in the template because um again we were trying to keep it simple and what would work for the most people and we didn t we knew not everyone will be in a situation where they ll have information for the upcoming year But you can do it um if you have more precise information better information something that ll be more informative to the student
24. g if they re eligible for in state or out of state tuition if that was something you included when you did your part of the calculator If you didn t say we offer in state versus out of state it won t say that So it is customized for your institution to that extent Marital Page 8 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 9 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com status again is something that we re using to help approximate I have a typo there sorry uh what there dependency status is So if they say they re married we re gonna put them in the independent category If they say they have children dependent children then again we re gonna put them in the independent with children category And that all those factors are used then to look up an EFC for the students Um the the data tables is also broken down by the number of people in the household So now we know we figured out a dependency now we re crossing that with the number of people in the household and the number of people in college next year So we have a data table that takes into consideration dependency status number in college and number in family and then parent then income parent institute and income if it s a dependent Okay And then it goes and finds the cell in our data table behind the scenes which is based on FAFSA data from FAFSA filers that says students who are let s say depende
25. ial aid form In IPEDS it s on something called the institutional characteristics form but it should put be the that same number that your IR office is reporting to IPEDS It s first time full time students price of attendance or you call it cost of attendance Then um users are asked 9 questions 9 simple questions on their dependency status um cost of attendance and EFC when the students go to use the tool they re asked these questions and that s what we use to output a net price So a little bit of behind the scenes So how does that all work That s seems pretty simple for something that s really complex Well the technical review panel that got together the financial aid administrators and the IR officers that got together to talk about this decided that the best approach because it s so hard to predict forward what you re gonna be able to give out in financial aid Page 4 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 5 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com would be to develop this template at least as something that says what would a student who is similar to me have gotten last year What would my net price have been a previous year And so what we have is a lookup table It s data in the background where you find the characteristics of the students based on what they entered you find the EFC range based on some data that the department provides and then it looks up the me
26. information So um what is getting reported to IPEDS actually that cost of attendance gets reported to IPEDS in the fall so your IR office just reported it to us But it it doesn t matter it s just what matters is that the data from the grant information is from the same year as the data of the cost of attendance information So that that makes sense you don t wanna be subtracting one year from another that won t give a good estimate Okay I it doesn t quite work with what I was thinking because um you know we we establish our formula and we wanna use the formula for for example in this February we ll wanna publish our financial aid estimator for the 11 12 year um and will know what our formula is and we ll have a you know basic idea of what the federal aid would be but we won t have the actual data from that year because it hasn t happened yet Right So wouldn t be able to do that They have to align and I m pretty sure that s actually in the law itself so there s no wiggle room Okay That s a bummer Any more questions Yeah Page 18 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 19 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Male 6 Elise Miller Male 6 Elise Miller Male 6 Elise Miller Male 6 Elise Miller Male 6 www verbalink com Um if we decide to use your template and we download the information and then upload the data that we re requi
27. ing you this you know net price This is just giving you some idea So there s a general amount of caveats that will be included in the output regardless However we also wanted to give you an opportunity to personalize it and customize it for your institution So we have provided three different explanation boxes in which you can provide some additional sort of footnotes and caveats that would be displayed with the output on the calculator So for instance perhaps um perhaps it doesn t make sense to include the international students in these calculations Well you could say down here does not include international students Okay Another example might be um let s say your engineering program pays a higher cost of attendance than the most first time full time programs or something like that so this the cost of attendance you entered wouldn t be applicable to engineering students You d wanna make a note of that as well We do allow you to review all that information that you entered So a quick review of the information to make sure you still agree with it And then ba boom I don t know the right word Laughter Um out comes a file multiple files including images and everything you need to do to put that on your website ready to use Okay So it basically last year we demo d doing it but it took a little time to do it in front of you but um it s it s really quite simple Just you just create
28. ion for Institutional Researchers and we had some internal conversations and decided that median really is a better measure of central tendency in this case than an average would be which could get skewed and really throw off the information and be misleading So now now we have what about um we have about 10 months for you to get this up on your website So we wanna give you some questions today to think about as you decide where to go from here First of all do you just wanna use the department template By the end of the calendar year I ve promised to have an updated version up there so you could go home in January and do this and enter the data and have something up even before October but it will need to be updated as new versions of our data are released to you Um the other option as the law says is you can develop your own calculator And the only requirement is that it contains the same minimum set of elements as the department which I ll cover in a second Um but in developing your own there s a lot of third party vendors out there I m sure you ve been contacted by many of them and they have been um coming up with uh different calculators that they believe meets the requirements So for instance well the voluntary system of accountability those who are involved with that effort I know they ve come up with a calculator for their institutions to use and we have talked some with them about that Page 10 of 20
29. l the warnings and limitations you want this you would want the student to read And also consider putting in those caveats um some sort of link to your actual financial aid site and push them to actually fill out financial aid forms if you have them Now one of the things I wanna mention when when you re putting inputting you know those caveats and explanations um now the one we put in you know kinda came directly out of the law so there is some jargon in there but you know one one thing that you can help I think IR officers with who are assisting in this effort is coming up with language that makes sense to students Because we re very good in saying the technical you know this you know only applies to first time full time students which you know might not make sense to a student So really think about how you can make those words consumer friendly so that it makes sense to the student as well and it s not just a technical researcher term that an IR person liked or an NCS you know statistical person would put in there Page 12 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 13 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com Another thing to think about and discuss on your campus Who wants ownership over this and where should it live on your website Again this is just one of many disclosure requirements that was in the higher education opportunity act I m sure you
30. nt with four people in their family one in college and this income range their median EFC was this Okay And that s what s in our look up table in the background And we have a cell crossing all those different characteristics Like in the institutional application the student application um also has a review screen so they can look at the information that they entered If they decide to change some of that information they can go back and change it Otherwise they can continue on to the final result This is just an example of what that data looks like and again we will be releasing this data file so that you can actually see the data behind the scene but it basically just shows the median EFC four people by dependency status number in college family size income level So this is what the output screen looks like Again I m sorry that the writing small it s a lot to fit on a slide but um it shows the academic year on which it s based It breaks out the price of attendance cost of attendance by tuition and fees room and board all those fields that you entered uh when you did the uh institutional part Then the estimated total grant aid and then it just subtracts that grant aid from the top line cost of attendance and gives an estimated net price In the bottom in red with some bold is Saying this is not a guarantee of what you re paying this just gives you an idea of what students with similar characteristics to yours
31. paid um in previous years And then any additional caveats that you entered that are specific to your institution also would appear underneath that Page 9 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 10 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com So if you talk to your IT folks or if you re an IT folk yourself maybe this will make lots of sense to you but this is actually what is produced an HTML file We wanted to use something that went across platforms that everyone would be able to use whatever systems they re using on their campuses And some of the other features we ve already covered but this is just a summary like it works for academic year reporters it works for program year reporters It uses this look up table approach rather than a predictive EFC formula approach uh to doing this All right Another question that s come up is the law says average you re saying median what s the deal Well we piloted this with a number of institutions We had some IR people and we had some financial aid people test out the calculator when we when it was under development and they ran it and did it with their averages and they realized that the numbers were getting very skewed um by some applicants in certain categories For instance maybe an athlete was got a very large award and it was skewing the numbers And so um we had conversations with NASFA as well as AIR which is the Associat
32. re all familiar with them Um there is a nice report on the IPEDS website that a group called NPEC put out that actually summarizes in a table all the different disclosure requirements that was for the consumer information that was in HEOA It s a really great report I encourage you to check it out It also gives some tips on where and how to display those disclosure requirements And so you wanna think about whether this is a part of those or if this is separate Is it on your is this an IR office thing Is this on your main website Is this on your admissions website You know all these different you know financial aid website Where where do you wanna house it Another thing some of this institutions I won t say much about this but I encourage you to talk to each other and hear what each other are doing so that you re not just doing it in a vacuum So um we re facilitating some of those conversations through working with the Association for Institutional Research They ve got a website with resources available where you can submit questions and kinda hear what other folks are doing as well This is that website I made reference to Again this is the institutional side of it cause I can sit up here and I can explain to you all the requirements and the law and I can tell you what the department you know how we re implementing this requirement but when you take it back to your campus and you have to figure this ou
33. red to submit and then we get your EFC tables do you envision us doing that submission to you every year or once we get that template uh are we just gonna update the tables locally then with the new data Can you say that one can you move in a little closer to the mike and repeat it one more time Sure Uh let s say we decide to use your template and we go through the process of telling you what the median uh the mean median I guess it is uh financial aid and then we get your EFC tables and as you said you package that all up and give it to us once and then we can put it onto our websites Right Do you anticipate that we should be giving you that data each year and with the new EFC tables unattached or are we just gonna get the new EFC table and then we re just gonna up filter the data into the tables that already exist Yeah What we this is a process if you use the template that you d pretty much have to do every year about and we hope to have our updated EFC tables um for the template up in October in the future And let me but I wanna clarify something based on your question You re not giving us any data in this process It s seems like it because you re entering it on the web we are not taking your data We are just putting it in that file to output to you So nothing is happening between the department and you in providing data Okay All right We are just putting it in the correct table form
34. t and you wanna know what your colleagues are doing um really AIR working with NASFA is um facilitating that sort of those sort of resources in work so Just quickly some of the frequently asked questions that we continue to get We ve already covered Basically if you don t have first time full time students do you have to have calculator No but you can Um I already have a calculator can we use that If it meets the minimum set of data elements yes or you can change it so that it does meet the minimum set of data elements and then use it Now this is a hard one what if I only have three first time full time students on my campus how how am I gonna do this There s no way I can populate all those cells you know all those difficult EFC ranges And it s it s difficult but you still Page 13 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 14 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 Male 1 www verbalink com according to the law have to meet the requirement so one thing we have suggested that if you have very small cohort in a single year try to do some estimated numbers based on doing multiple years of information Another possibility you need to do the first time full time version but you can also do one that s relevant to all those other students on your campus who aren t first time full time We already answered the one on federal methodology versus institutional methodology
35. t they consider it in awarding aid So we really tried to keep it at the very basic level knowing that you would have an interest in making it more precise as um as you are able So I just wanna emphasize one thing I mean we have to do this has to work for a cosmetology college as well as a research university and everything in between So you can see the complexity of having to develop something that might work for all those different types of institutions So if you haven t checked out the template yet I encourage you to do it I was really excited how we were able to make this work Basically you can access it again through the IPEDS website and you go in and there s a user manual that you ll be able to print out to help you but you re gonna use an institutional application to prepare the calculator then it actually produces something that you re IT person can put on your website very easily It s basically about picking a URL name and dragging and dropping files to create it I m not a tech person but I ve seen someone do it so it s really easy um if you decide to use the template So just a quick overview of the institutional information Now this is not the easy part this is having to gather data to put into the institutional application so that we can produce the calculator So price or cost of attendance data that gets reported to IPEDS as well You probably don t get that form because it s not on the financ
36. the URL so if ____ institution backslash you know net price calculator or whatever you decide to call it and you drag and drop files on to that um space and then it s there So the data files are there the images are there You can also go into the code and add your institution name and things like that or additional text So it s uh fairly easy to do Now so what is there Well this is what it looks like for a student or a parent who s coming in to use this if you decide to use Page 7 of 20 VAE_FSA_24 Page 8 of 20 Elise Miller Male 1 Male 2 Male 3 Female Male 4 Male 5 Male 6 www verbalink com this template on your website First of all we decided to take that caveat up front and have them agree to it before they even get in to the calculator So you know I can t guarantee they will read it but it does say here that this is not a commitment of what you will be paying to attend this institution Um and it encourages them to go to FAFSA to fill out um and to actually apply for financial aid So they agree to that and that s the first step of the end users process So here s the questions they re asked And I just wanna emphasize again the reason we wanted to keep it limited to these very few questions is because it has to work across all different types of institutions but also we didn t want to intimidate or scare off uh students who are using it So we tried to keep it to a the minimum amount possibl
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