This Week In IPEDS (TWII)

Details about Changes to the IPEDS Student Financial Aid (SFA) Component for the 2011-12 Data Collection Year

The Office of Management and Budget has approved changes to the IPEDS data collection for 2011-12. This document provides more detailed information about some of the changes to the Student Financial Aid (SFA) component to help keyholders plan their reporting for the upcoming data collection year. The full list of changes to SFA and other IPEDS components is available at https://surveys.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ViewContent.aspx?contentId=22.

For All Institutions

• SFA will be moved from the Spring collection to the Winter collection. The Winter collection will open on December 7, 2011 and close for keyholders on February 8, 2012. Because SFA materials are available now, we strongly encourage institutions to review the SFA instructions, forms, FAQs, and narrative edits before the Winter collection opens to familiarize themselves with the changes mentioned here.
• For reporting grant or scholarship aid in SFA, institutions should report “aid awarded” rather than “aid received” or “aid awarded and accepted.” The amount awarded may be different from the amount that was actually disbursed to students. For example, a student may be awarded grant or scholarship aid at the beginning of the academic year but then leave the institution before the entire amount is disbursed. In this case, institutions should report the original amount of grant or scholarship aid that was awarded. Note that there is no change to how loans to students should be reported. Institutions should continue to report on loans that were awarded to and accepted by the student.
• In Part E, an additional column will collect the number of students in Group 4 who were awarded any Title IV grant aid, by income categories (Column 2 below). For each income category, institutions will report:
  • Column 1: Number of students in Group 4 who were awarded any Title IV aid
  • Column 2: Number of students in Group 4 who were awarded any Title IV grant aid
  • Column 3: Total amount of grant or scholarship aid awarded to Group 4 students from the following sources: the federal government/state local government, or the institution

For Program Reporters ONLY:

• Program reporters will report data in SFA for an academic year, as defined by the institution. The institutionally-defined academic year should fall within the 12-month full aid year (July 1–June 30). Accordingly, the student cohort for program reporters in SFA will be undergraduate students enrolled anytime during the academic year. Similarly, institutions should report on aid awarded to these students anytime during the academic year.
• For Groups 3 and 4, institutions will report only those students in the institution’s largest program. Please note that because of this change, and since HEOA requires three years’ worth of data on net price, all program reporters must submit three years’ worth of data for Groups 3 and 4 this year. Institutions should be prepared to report data for Group 3 and 4 students for the following academic years: 2010-11, 2009-10, and 2008-09. Please also note that if an institution’s largest program changes in future years, the institution will need to report three years’ worth of data for the new largest program.

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