New federal financial aid regulations going into effect July 1 will bring about a significant change to the Satisfactory Academic Progress policy at Eastern Michigan University.
The new regulations require all universities in the country to limit the amount of semesters students are allowed to be on probation to one.
EMU Financial Aid Director Cynthia Van Pelt said 17,000—roughly 74 percent — of EMU’s student body received some type of financial aid during the winter 2011 semester. Of this number, 2,000 students were on Pre-Cancellation 1 and 480 were on Pre-Cancellation 2.
Van Pelt said over time, there has been an increase in the number of students on probation, but certain factors have to be taken into account.
“There has been an increase, but there also has been an increase in the number of students on aid,” she said. “Overall, I think the percentage of students on probation has stayed the same.”
EMU’s current policy, which ends June 30, allows students to be on SAP probation for two semesters. Under the current SAP, students are eligible for aid, but they must meet the SAP requirements by the end of the second semester or their aid eligibility will be canceled.
Van Pelt said the new regulations were signed into law last October.
“Schools have until July 1 to revise their policies and to get the computer systems set up for the change,” Van Pelt said. “The regulations go into effect in the fall. For some schools this is going to be a huge change but for Eastern, this is small. We’ve always had a policy where we review academic progress after every semester. Some schools only review once a year.”
Van Pelt said her department has yet to determine the type of effect this could have on EMU students.
“Well, that’s a tough call and we’ve been trying to determine that ourselves,” Van Pelt said. “We do know that initially it means that there will be a lot more students on warning because we’re going to have more students grouped into one group.”
The regulations also require schools to standardize the language to call the probationary semester a “warning.” Van Pelt said the government believed it was necessary to make sure all of the universities in the country implemented the same policy to prevent any confusion.
“One of the biggest reasons is that they wanted to standardize the policies across the United States,” she said. “If you have 4,000 colleges around the country, there are going to various policies. They found some schools had lenient policies. As students transferred, it was hard to understand why one school would have a policy and they transferred to a different school with a different policy.”
Students currently on probation at EMU will shift into the warning category, regardless of whether or not they were on probation one or two semesters.
“If they are on probation one for winter and they were going into the fall as probation two, they will shift into a warning,” Van Pelt said. “All the probation one and two students will all become warning at the same time. They’ll still receive financial aid. No one is going to be cut off.”
When determining whether or not students are meeting SAP requirements, Van Pelt said the university looks at three things —- a qualitative and quantitative policy, and the maximum time frame.
The qualitative policy refers to the quality of the work or the GPA.
“That will vary a bit from school to school, but at Eastern, undergrads are supposed to have a 2.0 and grads should have a 3.0,” she said.
The amount of coursework that the students complete is referred to as the quantitative policy.
“We call it the completion rate,” Van Pelt said. “It compares the number of credit hours a student takes and the credit hours that the student earns a grade in. Our policy is that students are supposed to have at least a 67 percent completion rate.”
The maximum time frame is a regulation that schools must enforce because undergraduate students cannot receive financial aid past 150 percent of their graduation requirements.
“At EMU, in almost all programs, 124 credits are required,” Van Pelt said. “There’s quite a bit of wiggle room, but if a student takes 186 credits, they’re cut off. We can’t approve financial aid anymore because they’re past that 150 percent.”
She said it’s important to note that if a student is not meeting SAP requirements at the end of the semester, it doesn’t mean they can never receive aid again.
“They can appeal,” Van Pelt said. “I think this means we’ll get more appeals. The other piece is that schools just can’t say ‘okay I approve your appeal.’”
When a student submits an appeal, the financial aid looks at three things, Van Pelt said.
The first is whether the student gave a clear explanation of what went wrong that caused them to be unsuccessful,” she said. “The second part is what is the student’s plan to get it right. Are there issues already resolved? So they told us what was wrong, but are they also telling us how it won’t be a continuing issue? And lastly, what is their plan? Do they need academic support? Are they meeting with Holman?”
Van Pelt said her department also examines the most recent semester a student had to see if they’ve improved at all.
“Usually if they’ve gone on probation that means they’ve had more than one rough semester,” she said. “We’re looking for a pattern of improvement and to see if they’ve figured out what went wrong.”
Kennedy Schwab, a potential EMU transfer student, said the new regulations are fair and necessary.
“I really think students need to start holding themselves more accountable,” Schwab said. “I know some people have special circumstances as to why they couldn’t do well in school, but for the other people, it’s just a matter of slacking. At some point, you’ve got to do your work.”
