800.242.0977 [email protected]3000 W Kellogg Drive Wichita, KS 67213 OCTOBER 2020 NEWSLETTER FY 2017 OFFICIAL COHORT DEFAULT RATES RELEASED SEPTEMBER 28 th On Monday, September 28, 2020, USDE distributed the FY 2017 official cohort default rate (CDR) notification packages and accompanying documentation via the Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) to all eligible schools. Each eCDR package contained the following information: IMPORTANT DATES: October 1 October 7 DJA Webinar Enrollment Reporting/NSLDS 11:00 a.m. CDT October 12 Columbus Day – DJA Open, Federal Offices Closed October 21 Happy National Financial Aid Day! October 27-29 AACS Virtual Annual Convention October 31 Happy Halloween! November 2nd FISAP Submission Deadline IN THIS ISSUE: FY 2017 Cohort Default Rates Department Issues Email on CARES Act Update CARES Act Institutional Reporting Comments Requested: New HEERF Data Collection Direct Loan Fee Change Phase Two of COD System Implementation to Support CARES Act Reminder: FISAP Due Compliance Corner DJA Calendar It’s October! Anybody else feel like taking a deep breath now that a lot of the major deadlines due in the month of September have passed?! Unfortunately, the Financial Aid Industry rarely offers down time and October 1 st marks the date students can begin completing the 2021/2022 FAFSA. Now it is time to start focusing on preparing for another award year. Additionally, in this newsletter, we will cover all the new updates regarding the CARES Act and the HEERF reporting requirements. We also discuss the newly published Cohort Default Rates you should have received last month. October 1 st has also brought about a new Direct Loan fee. Typically in October, we are finalizing FISAP submission, but the COVID pandemic the deadline was extended to November 2 nd . Be sure to read our reminder in this newsletter and be sure you comply with the deadline. Lastly, be sure to review our Compliance Corner regarding how to utilize a joint tax return to figure individual AGI and taxes paid in the event the filer of a joint return has become widowed, divorced or separated. This step can be crucial to the verification process. Thank you and until next time, stay safe and take care! Deborah John, President
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OCTOBER 2020 NEWSLETTER - gotodja.com · October 1 newsletter, we will October 7 DJA Webinar Enrollment Reporting/NSLDS 11:00 a.m. CDT October 12 Columbus Day – DJA Open, Federal
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DEPARTMENT ISSUES CARES ACT EMAIL ON HEERF UPDATE The Department recently issued an email to grantees of the CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief
Fund regarding additional reporting requirements. The purpose of the email was to inform institutions of several
recent updates to the HEERF programs. The email clarified the following:
1) Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is an allowable expenditure under HEERF Just to clarify, purchases to ensure the physical safety of students on campus is an allowable use of a
grantee’s Institutional Portion of its allocation under section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act, when these
costs are new or added and needed to implement “significant changes to the delivery of instruction due
to the coronavirus.”
This may include the reasonable costs of PPE, cleaning supplies, facility cleaning, or the purchase of
items to help detect or prevent the spread of COVID-19 (e.g., thermometers, plastic barriers, or face
masks). Grantees may also use these funds to make non-permanent changes to existing instructional
facilities to ensure social distancing.
The purchase of PPE, cleaning supplies, facility cleaning, or the purchase of items to help detect or
prevent the spread of COVID-19 items is also an allowable use of funds for grants received under
sections 18004(a)(2) and 18004(a)(3) of the CARES Act.
(2) Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) reporting not
required for HEERF Following the Department’s July 9 statement (published as an Electronic Announcement (EA) to
institutions of higher education on July 10, 2020) regarding the use of the FFATA Subaward Reporting
System (FSRS) for purposes of reporting the use of HEERF funds, the Department received a number of
questions and concerns raised about reporting for HEERF grantees. It has since been concluded that
institutions receiving HEERF formula funding will not likely have subawards and will not be able to use
FSRS for reporting their use of HEERF funds.
Therefore, the Department will be using the authority provided by Section 18004(e) of the CARES Act
to specify how institutions will publish certain information on a quarterly basis on their websites. To this
end, they have released a draft information form to accomplish this and also publish the form in the
Federal Register for public comment for a first report due October 30, 2020, covering the period from
the date of the first HEERF grant award through September 30, 2020. The draft form published in the
FR is covered in the article below.
More information is available at our HEERF Reporting webpage
(3) Changes to the section 18004(a)(1) Student Aid allocation public reporting requirement The Department recently revised the May 6th Electronic Announcement (EA) on institutional reporting
for the emergency financial aid grants to students made with institutions’ allocations under section
High-Level Schedule and Summary of COD System Changes for the CARES Act (Phase Two) As noted in the July 30th announcement, the first phase of COD System functionality was implemented on Aug.
2, 2020. Phase two was completed on Sept. 27, 2020. This phase included:
New and modified reports
Modifications to the Return of Title IV (R2T4) calculator on COD website
Technical Information and Document Availability An updated version of the 2020–21 COD Technical Reference was posted in a September 30, 2020 Electronic
Announcement. As noted in previous announcements, there are no changes to the COD Common Record XML
Schema.
COD System Changes
The following changes will impact COD System processing for the Federal Pell Grant (Pell Grant), Iraq and
Afghanistan Service Grant, Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant,
and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) programs.
Changes to the Payment Period Start Date for the Coronavirus Indicator In the July 30, 2020 Electronic
Announcement, it was noted that one of the requirements for the Coronavirus Indicator was that the
disbursement’s payment period start date is a date inclusive of or between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31, 2020.
Beginning Sept. 27, 2020, payment period start date window has been expanded, and the Coronavirus Indicator
will be accepted when the payment period start date is a date inclusive of or between July 1, 2019 and Dec. 31,
2020.
Note: While the payment period start date window has been expanded, all other requirements related to the
Coronavirus Indicator must be met.
Subsidized Usage Calculator Updates
Beginning Sept. 27, 2020, the Subsidized Usage Limit Applies (SULA) calculator was updated to include a
Coronavirus Indicator field. Once selected, the disbursements flagged with the Coronavirus Indicator will be
excluded from the subsidized usage calculation. As a result, users can view the effect of the added Coronavirus
Indicator on the following types of calculations:
• Subsidized Usage Period
• Sum Actual Subsidized Usage Periods
• Maximum Subsidized Eligibility Period
• Remaining Subsidized Eligibility Period
COD School Report – Weekly Coronavirus Report
The Weekly Coronavirus Report will provide cumulative data for students who have received Coronavirus
Disaster relief (have disbursements flagged with the Coronavirus Indicator) by program (Direct Loan, TEACH
Grant, and Pell/Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant) and award year. The reports will be generated on a weekly
basis and in comma delimited (.csv) format.
Schools will retrieve the reports from the COD Reporting website; the report will not be sent via the Student
Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG).
The file layout for the Weekly Coronavirus Report will be available in the COD Technical Reference.
Direct Loan Rebuild
While the Direct Loan Rebuild was not be updated with the Coronavirus Indicator, changes were made to the
content provided in the report. Specifically, to minimize the impact to schools and vendors that have internal
system edits on loan period dates, Direct Subsidized Loans that have a disbursement marked with the
Coronavirus Indicator will be excluded. This is because of the potential systematic updates to the award begin
and end dates for flagged disbursements.
For schools that may need a Direct Loan Rebuild and have excluded Direct Subsidized Loan records (due to the
Coronavirus Indicator), they can work with the COD School Relations Center for assistance with those specific
records.
National Student Loan Data System Interface
Following this system release, information about disbursements flagged with the Coronavirus Indicator will be
passed to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS®). Note: Following additional system work and a
separate NSLDS implementation planned for Nov. 22, 2020, NSLDS will use the Coronavirus Indicator
information for SULA processing on NSLDS, such as calculating the Remaining Eligibility Period (REP) for
the interest subsidy. In addition, NSLDS will label loan discharges due to COVID-19 as “Coronavirus”
(currently these discharges are only marked with the discharge type code of “HC02”.
Return of Title IV (R2T4) Changes
With this release, changes were made to the Return of Title IV (R2T4) calculator to allow schools to perform an
RT24 calculation specifically for aid recipients who withdrew due to COVID-19-related circumstances. The
updated tool provides schools with a mechanism for reporting the amount of Title IV grant or loan assistance
not returned due to the CARES Act provisions.
In response to feedback from the community, additional options are being examined (besides the R2T4
calculator) for reporting Title IV grant or loan assistance not returned due to the CARES Act provisions, but
those options will likely not be available until early 2021. In the meantime, schools may use the R2T4
calculator for any aid recipients who withdrew due to COVID-19, but there is no requirement to do so, and
some schools may opt to wait until other options are available. As noted previously, calculations for COVID-19
withdrawals will be used for reporting purposes only.
As of Sept. 27, 2020, the following updates were put in place—
October 2020 10
• The COD R2T4 calculator was updated to incorporate a new R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator checkbox.
The checkbox will be available for the 2018–19 Award Year and forward. o Once the indicator is selected, the user will be required to select a “Calendar Profile” that has a
payment period or period of enrollment state date within the valid date range.
• The R2T4 Review Calculation page and Student Record Management page was updated to include an
R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator field (on student records that were previously marked as such). It is an
informational field only; users are not able to update the field on these pages.
• The R2T4 Reports page were updated to allow users to search for calculations with disbursements
marked with the new R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator and allow users to run reports to show the amount of
aid by program that would have been returned for disbursements marked with the new Coronavirus
Indicator. The search dropdown box includes an R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator option. Users are able to
select “Yes” to view a report with only R2T4 calculations where the R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator was
flagged. Users select “No” to view a report with only R2T4 calculations where the R2T4 Coronavirus
Indicator was not flagged.
The R2T4 Report will be expanded to include the following columns: Calendar Period Start Date,
Calendar Period End Date, and R2T4 Coronavirus Indicator.
In addition, the Department is in the process of developing training material specifically about the changes to
the R2T4 calculator. Once it is ready, it will be made available on the FSA Training website.
Contact Information If you have questions about this announcement, contact the COD School Relations Center at 1-800-848-0978.
To learn more on Cybersecurity Compliance and how to prepare the most effective Information Security
Program, our very own Renee Ford, Vice President of DJA, will be hosting a webinar on the topic during this
virtual convention.
2020 FEDERAL STUDENT AID (FSA) TRAINING CONFERENCE GOING VIRTUAL Don’t miss the first-ever virtual Federal Student Aid training conference!
Federal Student Aid is committed to providing a meaningful training experience for you amid the uncertainty
caused by the COVID-19 emergency. The 2020 FSA Training Conference for Financial Aid Professionals will
be delivered virtually Dec. 1-4, 2020, and will feature dynamic keynote addresses, engaging general forums,
and informative breakout sessions.
Later this summer, additional information will be released on the IFAP website about the virtual conference and
how you can participate.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this Newsletter is provided as a service and represents our best efforts to assist institutions with federal student aid
regulations. We have collected information we believe to be important in finding and obtaining the resources for administering federal student aid; however, we assume
no liability for the use of this information. The information in this newsletter does not constitute, and should not be construed as, legal advice.