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Inceptia's SAP Advisor is a fully automated online solution that provides students, faculty and the financial aid staff with the tools to effectively manage Satisfactory Academic Progress appeals quickly and seamlessly. SAP Advisor increases efficiency and empowers students to actively engage which improves the opportunity for successful outcomes. Visit Inceptia.org to learn more.

The Department of Education (ED) should update its method of determining an institution's financial health and increase its transparency in how it calculates its financial composite score and shares that information with the public, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Policymakers should make significant changes to the federal student loan repayment system, including moving to a single, automatic income-driven plan, reinstating borrowing limits for graduate students, and tying the terms of repayment to the total amount borrowed, according to a new research brief.

The Pell Grant program has for decades provided financial assistance for low-income college students, but as the price of college has risen, the program’s impact has not kept pace. In order to maximize the impact of the program for students, policymakers should make some adjustments to how students apply for a Pell Grant, and how awards are distributed, according to a new research brief.

NASFAA receives many inquiries about how financial aid offices are typically structured within an institution. In the spirit of collaboration, NASFAA invites schools to share their organization chart. We will remove any identifying information about your institution before publishing the charts and making them available to the membership to use as examples. Take this opportunity to share how you structure positions in your office. Please submit your chart by Friday, Sept. 29.

Join the U.S. Department of Education's Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) and FSA's Senior Advisor of Cybersecurity for a virtual meeting on September 27 from 3 to 5 pm, Eastern. Federal Student Aid as well as representatives from ED's privacy office will discuss data security and breach requirements, interesting findings regarding undiscovered postsecondary data breaches, and share best practices.

Below are the presentation slides for the Disaster Relief - Guidance for Helping Title IV Participants affected by a Major Disaster webinar, conducted on September 13, 2017, in PDF Format.

"For debt-ridden Americans in federal student loan forgiveness programs, October is a month of hope and trepidation," Forbes reports. "The first wave of college graduates who were accepted into the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program 10 years ago and made their payments faithfully each month are eagerly waiting to find out this October whether their debt is wiped clean, as promised."

"San Saeteurn took welding classes at American River College for only a few months before he was tapped by recruiters from Siemens USA who came to one of his classes," The Sacramento Bee reports. "... The Sacramento resident expects to be working on railcars and other projects for the international company at its Sacramento site. It will be a substantial increase in pay, compared to his former job at a warehouse."

"Does free community college work? An experiment in Chicago suggests that the answer is yes," Juan Salgado writes in an opinion piece for The New York Times. "Two years ago, under a program called the Star Scholarship, Chicago began to offer free community college to all public high school graduates who earned a B average or higher and demonstrated near college-level proficiency in their work. To keep costs for students low, they also get their textbooks free."

"If you have lived in Arizona for more than 30 years, you remember a time when our state universities were among the most competitively priced in the country," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich writes for The Arizona Republic. "They all offered quality educational opportunities while complying with our state's constitutional requirement to make a college education 'as nearly as free as possible' for all Arizona students."

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