Packager Reduces Award To Zero (PART 1)
An issue was encountered during packaging for several students who appeared to be eligible for a DGU1 loan award. In the automatic packager for financial aid in Colleague (PKCR), the correct amount was being awarded, but then the amount was being reduced to zero by some portion of the awarding process.
There is a workable solution, at least for some instances of this type of problem. The fix involves going to the PARL screen for the applicable financial aid year, and opening the rule that corresponds to the award code in question. (In the case noted above, the rule was DGU1AMT.) When the default award amount is relatively high (for DGU1AMT, it was set to $20,500), try performing the packaging process again after updating this value to a low number, say $100. Be sure to run PKCR initially in non-update mode for one or more students, in order to verify that it solves the problem with no unintended negative side effects.
This change was made based on an eCommunity question found on the Ellucian Hub, which involved a problem similar to what we experienced. Apparently, the reasoning behind the reduction of such an award to zero is that, since the award default is supposed to be a high value, when the student does not have a COA high enough to receive that amount, the process simply zeros out the award. Following is a link to the Ellucian article, entitled "S.FA.PKG.AMT.FFELP - Issue with Unsub awards for Graduate Students".
https://ecommunities.ellucian.com/thread/14704
Packager Reduces Award To Zero (PART 2)
Another issue was encountered during packaging for student(s) who appeared to be eligible for a Pell grant. In the automatic packager for financial aid in Colleague (PKCR), the correct amount was being awarded, but then the amount was being reduced to zero by some portion of the awarding process.
Based on reviewing the output of the Colleague debugging process I ran (GRS1) for this, it appears the problem with Pell packaging for these student(s) involves a setting in the corresponding Attendance Pattern. Specifically, if we are able to set the Attendance Pattern Enrollment value to "F" (or some value other than "N", as highlighted in the attachment), the Pell award should then package correctly.
PART 2 Redux: Occasionally we have a student whose award won't package, even though it does package in similar circumstances for other students. The difference in such a case may be the settings in a field in the SA.ACYR file called SA.TERM.FP.STATUS, which is displayed in AIDE, as shown in the screen clip attached. When the setting can be changed from "N" (not enrolled) to "F" (full-time), the missing award may then package as expected.
Packager Reduces Award To Zero (PART 3)
Another issue was encountered during packaging for student(s) who were being packaged "late" for the current academic year. Example: Packaging being done during June 2020 for academic year 2019-20. It is possible to use the same subroutine for processing a particular type of award (in this example, AG19 and AG20) over multiple academic years. When this is the case, the "starting year" value coded within the subroutine must remain at the original value, i.e. the starting year of the earliest academic year in the range. If the starting year is incremented, as it had been in this example, packaging the award late for the current academic year will not work as expected, i.e. that award was reduced to zero.
Packager Reduces Award To Zero (PART 4)
An example came up regarding the Parent PLUS loan (DPP1, etc.). Costs minus other packaged (non-stackable) awards left a potential positive loan amount. However, the potential loan amount is reduced in the corresponding subroutine, based on rules that provide a deduction based on the Class of the student (FR, SO, etc.). This sometimes will reduce a student's potential loan amount to zero.
Packager Reduces Loan Amounts To First-Year Maximum
Another issue reported was related to loan amounts for second year (sophomore level) transfer students. Maximum loan amounts vary by academic year, and in some cases, students are being assigned amounts through the automatic packager that are less than the maximum for which they actually qualify. In reviewing the packaging setup for loans, it was found that subroutines such as S.FA.PKG.AMT.DSS1, used for assigning amounts for government subsidized loans, call another routine named CALC.CLASS, which may not take into account transfer credit and/or registered credit in what could be considered a timely manner. This can cause a student's class standing to be calculated to an artificially lower level (e.g. freshman rather than sophomore). When presented with this information, the Financial Aid Office staff asked that the setup be left as is for now, and for the smaller numbers of students that are (and have been in the past) impacted by this, the financial aid loan amounts are manually adjusted as necessary.
Packager Reduces Tuition Remission Amounts Based On Other Awards
There is a field in the Awards file, called C26AW.TUIT.REMISS.SUBTRACT (also known as AW.USER9, field 53 of the Awards file), which when set to "Y", can cause a reduction in the amount of tuition remission awarded to a student also having the corresponding award. (For example, awarding for TCH may be affected.) The coding in the Awards file for this field should be reviewed by Financial Aid staff occasionally, to help insure the current settings are correct for all awards. This field is referenced in S.FA.PKG.AMT.TUIT.REMISS, which is the amount checking routine for tuition remission awards. (It is also helpful to insure that the default award amount for the tuition remission awards is up-to-date for the academic year. This can be checked on the PARL screen, which displays with packaging-related information "under" the AWD screen.)
Packager Reduces Loan Amounts Due To Non-Excluded Awards
Some awards that are not considered "stackable", per se, are not counted against loan amounts because they are considered to be "excluded". An example of this is Veteran Benefits (code VABEN). For an award to be considered excluded, the Need/Cost/EFC field on the AWD screen for the award has to be set to "E". Whether or not an award is set to be excluded in this way is determined through the Financial Aid Office.