[ctcLinkfinaidsupport] WSAC policy decision reduces FA administrative burden for WCG awards

[Ana Ybarra]

Subject: WSAC policy decision reduces FA administrative burden for WCG awards
Importance: High

Dear Presidents and Chancellors:
Some good news for your Friday the 13th! A newly announced Washington College Grant WSAC policy decision will reduce financial aid administrative burden for Washington's community and technical colleges. (See attached memorandum.)
While the increase in the Washington College Grant<https://wsac.wa.gov/wcg> (WCG) awards for eligible students in 2020-21 was great news for the eligible students we serve; unfortunately, the increase caused many students' financial aid awards to exceed mandatory tuition and fees.
This triggered a significant financial aid processing burden and delayed aid disbursement to students.
What caused the issue?

When the WCG maximum awards increased, this meant colleges needed to adjust awards for each individual credit above 12 credits. This differed from the previous funding when staff only had to adjust for enrollment levels below full-time.

This required these students' awards in ctcLink to be manually adjusted by financial aid staff to each term. Some colleges had over 400 student files to manually adjust each term.

Relief is here for financial aid staff

Yokiko Hayashi-Saguil, SBCTC Student Services Policy Associate, reached out to Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) leadership to seek their support to reduce the administrative burden on colleges and ensure funding gets to our students promptly.

As a result of a WSAC/SBCTC workgroup meeting this week, the following change will be made to the WCG manual:
"WSAC has defined award amounts based on actual tuition and estimated fees using a 15-credit tuition and fee amount. Adjustments are only required for less than full-time enrollment, as a result of need limitations, or quarters of eligibility restrictions."

WSAC will update its 2022-23 Washington College Grant and College Bound Scholarship Program Manual for Financial Aid Administrators program manual at the Resources for Financial Assistance Administrators Administrative Guidance<https://wsac.wa.gov/FAA-resources> website shortly to reflect this change.
Previous guidance in the program manual indicated that award adjustments were also required if a student's individual tuition and estimated fees based on their college of choice was less than the award amount established at 15 credits.
At some institutions, students enrolled in 12, 13, or 14 credits may have had tuition and estimated fees that were a few dollars below the 15-credit cost, resulting in extensive award revisions amounting to very small dollar amounts and creating undue administrative burden for all of the manual adjustments required.
Next steps
None! Effective immediately, college staff do not need to run additional queries to identify these specific students and can just award financial aid based on basic enrollment.
Hats off!
A special thank you to key system folks who pulled together to make this change:

  *   Dr. Chris Bailey, President, Lower Columbia College
  *   Carli Schiffner, SBCTC Deputy Executive Director of Education
  *   Dr. Lauren Hibbs, SBCTC Director of Student Services
  *   Yokiko Hayashi-Saguil, SBCTC Student Services Policy Associate
  *   Dani Bundy, SBCTC ctcLink PeopleSoft Customer Support Director
  *   Dr. Sue Orchard, Vice President of Student Services, Lower Columbia College
  *   April Tovar Villa, Financial Aid Director, Lower Columbia College
Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you,
-Grant
[Compass]Grant Rodeheaver
Deputy Executive Director / CIO, IT Division
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
grodeheaver at sbctc.edu<mailto:grodeheaver at sbctc.edu> * o: 360-704-3939  * c: 360-280-4733
sbctc.edu<https://www.sbctc.edu/> * Twitter: @SBCTCWashington<https://twitter.com/SBCTCWashington> * Facebook: @WASBCTC<https://www.facebook.com/wasbctc/>




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