Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I was up and shopping at 5 a.m. this morning for the first time in my life. Won't do that again.
I discussed student budgets for regular coursework in my last post, but there are exceptions: less than half time enrollment, correspondence courses, incarcerated students, and waivers.
Less than half time enrollment:
Regardless of whether a student is taking courses on campus or through correspondence study, certain college expenses cannot be included in the budget. Miscellaneous and personal expenses cannot be factored into the budget. Only tuition, fees, book & supplies allowance, dependent care expenses, and a limited room and board amount can be included. Your school will determine these expenses. Room and board can be included in the budget for up to three semesters (or equivalent). However, these costs cannot be given for more than two consecutive semesters at any one school. In other words, if you are attending less than half time on a regular basis, after one year's worth (two semesters), room and board expenses cannot be added the next semester, but can be used one more semester thereafter.
Correspondence Study:
A correspondence course is defined as a paper-based home study course where instructional materials are delivered via mail. Any course delivered by video tape or video disc is also considered a home study course unless the school offers the same course to on-campus students. Also, if your school offers more than 50% of all courses as telecommunications or correspondence courses, telecommunications courses are also counted as correspondence study.
I would speculate that most of you do not fall into the correspondence study category since so many courses are now online, but it's important to know that if you are taking correspondence courses, to be considered for federal student aid you must still be enrolled in a degree program (associate's, bachelor's, or master's). Also, if you are taking a combination of online and correspondence courses, your budget could be reduced depending on how many courses of each you are enrolled for any given term. Check with your school if you are taking a combination.
Only tuition, fees, and books and supplies can be included in a budget for correspondence study. Travel expenses and room/board expenses cannot be used unless a student is required to do residential training. Miscellaneous and personal expenses are not used in any circumstance.
Incarcerated students:
Incarcerated students cannot borrow federal student loans. Nor can they be considered for Pell Grant if incarcerated in a federal or state penal institution. There are few incarcerated students, if any, who can receive any type of federal financial aid. Only tuition, fees, and books and supplies can be used in the budget for these students.
Costs waived or paid by other sources:
Sometimes a student receives a tuition waiver or other form of assistance that pays some or all educational expenses. Examples of these are teacher waivers and JTPA grants. How these are treated depends on your school. If your school does not charge you what the assistance covers, then that expense cannot be included in your budget. If they do charge you, the expense can be included in your budget, with an offsetting resource on your financial aid letter. This is confusing, so let me provide examples.
- Say your tuition at XYZ university is $500 per semester, and your fees are $100. You receive a 100% teacher tuition waiver for the fall semester. The billing office receives this tuition waiver prior to the start of school, so when your first bill arrives, only $100 for fees is charged to you. The $500 tuition charge was not applied because it was waived. Therefore, the financial aid office cannot include tuition in your budget because it was never charged to you.
- In the same scenario with tuition waiver, you receive the first bill with a $500 tuition charge and $100 fee charge. But, this time the tuition waiver of $500 (100%) appears on your bill as a credit which pays the tuition charge. In this instance, the financial aid office can use the $500 tuition in your budget because it was charged to you.
Again, how these waivers or other forms of assistance are treated depends on your school's policy.
Hopefully this will give you some idea of what financial aid professionals deal with on a daily basis. As more and more non-traditional courses become available, it's a myriad of rules for financial aid professionals. I often get calls from students who are considering a range of different types of courses. There's no simple answer!