We work in a wonderful community where agencies — both private and government — provide us with the tools we need to understand regulatory changes that may impact our processes or maybe just best practices that help us better serve our students. Here are a few resources we’ve compiled from different providers to help you get a jump start on the 2023-2024 award year.
For starters, we’ve seen a lot regulatory changes over the last two years, many which go into effect for the 2023-2024 award year. If you haven’t been keeping track, don’t worry — you won’t have to plow through dozens of Dear Colleague letters to figure it all out because the National Association of Student Aid Administrators (NASFAA) has done it for you! Check out the NASFAA Compiled Title IV Regulations page where changes to regulations that impact you are color coded by the nature of the change (added or deleted) and the effective date.
Another nifty tool provided by NASFAA is the Tax Transcript Decoder©. This guide is intended to help aid administrators quickly identify which line of the transcript to reference during verification and other processes which involve ‘de-coding’ this document. As an added bonus, samples of the W2 form (Wage and Tax Statement), Schedule K-1 (form 1065) for income from a partnership, LLC or real estate and tips for determining whether you’re missing required schedules. The newest version for the 2023 – 2024 award year was published at the end of November.
Finally, if you haven’t updated your award letter format for a while, take a look at the NASFAA Financial Aid Offer Examples for Graduate and Undergraduate students. These examples contain all the information needed to comply with NASFAA’s updated Code of Conduct published in January 2021.
Federal Student Aid (FSA) has also recently provided some great tools to get ready for 2023 – 2024 and beyond. Head over to the Training Center and review these learning tracks:
- The FAFSA® Process
- Verification and Conflicting Information
- Professional Judgment and Dependency Status Determinations
- Understanding COA and Need Analysis
All have been updated for 2023-2024 award year processing.
And, if you want to get a jump on 2024-2025 where we’ll see major changes including replacing EFC with SAI (Student Aid Index) and a revision to the Pell Grant eligibility calculation, FSA has published a Draft Eligibility Guide.
The only constant in Financial Aid is change they say and the last few years have been a good example of that! Follow our blog for updates so you’re always in the know. And if you’re feeling stressed about the upcoming changes, don’t go it alone! Email info@heag.us to learn more about our Title IV Compliance Support service.