FSA ‘Working Quickly’ to Resolve Two Known ISIR Issues and Reprocess ISIRs
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
Federal Student Aid (FSA) on Friday said that it was aware and “working quickly” to resolve two issues affecting 2024-25 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) concerning conflicting tax information and assets for students or their contributors. FSA will reprocess affected records, but did not provide a date.
The first issue, FSA wrote via an electronic announcement, involves conflicting information that is created when Federal Tax Information (FTI) and Manual Input are present on the same ISIR. FSA first posted about this issue in June. According to FSA, once a fix is implemented and ISIRs are reprocessed, institutions will no longer need to request supporting tax documentation to manually correct the conflicting financial information.
Institutions may choose to wait for FSA to complete the reprocessing of impacted ISIRS. If an institution chooses to proceed in awarding aid before impacted ISIRs are reprocessed, FSA noted that those institutions must still resolve conflicting information on impacted ISIRs prior to disbursing aid during the interim period.
The second issue FSA identified happens when assets for a student or their contributors are both collected by the FAFSA and subsequently used in the Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation, even when they meet criteria under the law for an exemption from reporting assets. As a temporary solution, FSA wrote that if an institution has identified impacted ISIRs they may set the professional judgment (PJ) flag and correct the assets reported to “0.”
While institutions may wait for FSA to reprocess the impacted ISIRs, those that choose to move forward with awarding before the ISIRs are reprocessed must use the subsequent reprocessed ISIR if it results in greater eligibility for the student. Because the error involves the inclusion of assets in the SAI calculation when they should be excluded, the reprocessed ISIR will have either the same or lower SAI, if everything else remains the same.
For additional information about when assets are required to be used in the SAI calculation, institutions can check the 2024-25 SAI and Pell Grant Eligibility Guide.
"While we appreciate that FSA has acknowledged these technical errors and plans to reprocess the affected records, it is difficult for schools to decide how to proceed without knowing FSA's reprocessing timeline,” NASFAA Vice President of Public Policy and Federal Relations Karen McCarthy said. “We have reached out to FSA to encourage them to release details about the reprocessing timeline as soon as possible."
Publication Date: 9/27/2024
Jesse H | 9/30/2024 10:46:01 AM
Anyone else feeling mild-to-moderate heartburn about the thought of a wave of reprocessed ISIRs crashing upon our shores after students are already in school and attending? I almost wish they would just focus on fixing this for 25-26, or at least 24-25 "moving forward", and leave the older ISIRs alone.
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