To make financial aid work for today’s student, a federal SAP reset is needed

As we continue to celebrate Community College Month, my mind is on the 40.4 million adults in the United States with some postsecondary credit, but no credential — most of whom last attended a two-year institution. While students leave higher education for many reasons, changes in financial status and challenges paying for their education are often the most common reasons students quit school. However, despite these challenges, most non-completers want another chance to pursue their education. They simply need the support to do so.

As states and institutions look for innovative ways to reconnect these individuals to higher learning, the federal government can eliminate a significant hurdle that stands in the way between returning students who simply want to re-enroll and gain a credential that leads to good-paying jobs — the stringent satisfactory academic progress (SAP) policy. Federal law and regulations require institutions to establish certain criteria that students must meet to remain eligible for financial aid, including Pell Grants, federal student loans, and the Federal Work-Study program. SAP is defined as maintaining a minimum 2.0 GPA and passing enough classes to graduate within 150% of the expected timeframe. Unfortunately, if a student falls short of SAP, they can lose access to critical aid and are often forced to drop out of postsecondary education with little opportunity for redemption.

Current federal SAP legislation and regulations offer a broad enough definition that provides room for financial aid administrators to use professional judgment to support students who have failed to meet the GPA portion of SAP to stay in school or re-enroll. Unfortunately, financial aid administrators are hesitant to use their flexibility related to administering Title IV guidelines, so they often limit exemptions to examples listed in the Department’s regulations.

While there is a role for federal lawmakers to improve SAP, HLA’s new policy brief shows the SAP barrier is real and how ED can address the issue. SPOILER ALERT — institutions of higher education (IHEs) serving returning students, particularly community colleges, are at the heart of our six recommendations:

1. Clarify, through guidance, that schools have the flexibility to create an automatic reset for students who fall short of maintaining SAP after a short wait-out period. For example, we should allow students to attend and qualify for financial aid at another IHE after a one-year period or allow the student’s original IHE to create an automatic SAP reset after a certain amount of time, such as two years.
2. Remove ambiguity in what qualifies as a “special circumstance” and make clear to IHEs that any published list of circumstances is not exhaustive, meaning other valid reasons for an appeal could exist. Current guidance provides a limited set of examples of “special circumstances” as exemptions to the SAP requirements. These examples, including personal illness or the death of a family member, indicate relatively extreme and unusual circumstances when we actually consider why most students fail to meet SAP. Transportation challenges, access to reliable child care, illness of a family member, and job loss are more common than the aforementioned circumstances, and can easily derail one’s college plans. Improved guidance should empower financial aid administrators who assess and approve SAP appeals to use their flexibility in professional judgment to make way for students who previously did not meet SAP requirements.
3. Create a smoother pathway for returning “SAP-ed out” students using professional judgment. Appealing a SAP decision as a returning student can be a completely different experience than that of a continuing student. Institutions should be able to use professional judgment to support returning students whose circumstances may be unique. For instance, one returning student at an institution had her SAP appeal approved, received a 4.0 term GPA in her first year back, but again lost access to her financial aid because her cumulative GPA had not risen above 2.0. In this case, financial aid administrators — if given clearer guidance — could have kept the student on probation, given that she was making significant progress, albeit not strictly aligned with the SAP policy.
4. Encourage IHEs to create a clear, well-communicated, and expedited appeals process for students. Institutions should ensure that their appeals process is as efficient as possible for students and provides adequate support when needed so that students can maintain access to their financial aid. Schools such as Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) in Ohio are leading the way in this regard. For instance, Tri-C works with students by notifying them of their SAP status every term instead of annually, as well as operating a fully-online SAP appeals process with a 7–10 day turnaround between submitting the appeal and notice of approval/denial.
5. Encourage IHEs to better communicate to students what SAP is, how failing to meet it can impact their ability to continue accessing Title IV funds, and provide early warnings and interventions for students at risk of failing SAP. Institutional policies often vary as it relates to the timeline and frequency of notifying students of their SAP status. While the vast majority of schools notify students of their SAP status once a year, for many students, this notification is often too late to turn things around. More students need to be made aware of what SAP is and how not meeting these requirements directly impacts them. Encouraging institutions to notify their students every term of both what SAP is along with what their current SAP status is, would go a long way in ensuring that more students can meet SAP requirements and maintain access to their financial aid.
6. Encourage IHEs to collect and report data on the prevalence and disparate impact of falling short of maintaining SAP. By requiring institutions to provide this data disaggregated by Pell and enrollment status, gender, race, and disability status, institutions can better align their SAP policies to meet the needs of today’s students.

It is time for us to improve satisfactory academic progress policy to make postsecondary education more accessible and affordable for today’s students. We must work to remove barriers that impede today’s students from returning to higher education, a fundamental component of HLA’s Widen the Path campaign. Restoring SAP for these students is one way to do so.

To learn more about SAP, check out our newest policy brief.