About financial aid cost of attendance templates

To award students financial aid, your institution must develop a cost of attendance (budget) in line with regulations from the U.S. Department of Education outlined in the Federal Student Aid Handbook. A student’s cost of attendance (COA) goes beyond your institution’s tuition and fees and could include books, transportation, housing and child care. Depending on your institution, you may have one cost of attendance for all students or, more likely, different costs of attendance depending on a student’s enrollment load, whether they live on campus, tuition rates or other factors.

Campus Cafe uses a student’s cost of attendance when determining a student’s eligibility for federal financial aid. As such, you must set cost of attendance templates up prior to awarding federal aid.

Prerequisites

• For students to receive a cost of attendance, they must have a degree/program row. Without a row, Campus Cafe won’t ever generate a cost of attendance regardless of any configuration.

• For all semesters part of the federal aid year, you must set a full-time (FT) credit threshold and half-time (HT) credit threshold when configuring semesters. This doesn’t control cost of attendance but is important for related functions of National Student Clearinghouse and Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) reporting.

• Campus Cafe provides updated Pell and subsidized and unsubsidized (Stafford) loan schedules. We notify customers when the new year’s schedules are available for use.

Required permissions

Video tutorial

Methodology

Campus Cafe determines eligibility for federal awards based on federal rules, the student’s Student Aid Index (SAI) and your institution’s cost of attendance.

Student references

Campus Cafe looks to student data in its calculations.

• The Part Time Code on the student's degree detail screen determines eligibility for aid and for selecting the corresponding Pell schedule. This field doesn’t adjust automatically when a student changes enrollment.

• If the cost of attendance is tied to major, Campus Cafe refers to Major 1 (and only Major 1) on the student's current degree row.

Federal award calculations

• Pell Grants are based on the student's Student Aid Index (SAI)

• Subsidized Loans are based on remaining need

• Unsubsidized Loans are based on overall remaining cost of attendance and don’t depend on the remaining need constraint of the subsidized loans

Campus Cafe calculations

• Total Need = Total COA minus Student Aid Index (SAI)

• Remaining Need = Total COA minus SAI minus Pell minus Subsidized Loans

• Remaining COA = Total COA minus Pell minus Subsidized Loans

Custom named rules

When you establish a cost of attendance, you can tell Campus Cafe which elements of a student’s record to consider. If set to consider it, Campus Cafe considers a student’s major, degree start date, ISIR grade level, part-time code and/or degree site when calculating their cost of attendance.

If you need to consider a different factor, you can create custom named rules and then attach them to a cost of attendance. For example, all your nursing students are in the “nursing” major. However, you want a different cost of attendance for those participating in your online nursing program vs your on-campus program. To accommodate this, you create a custom named rule for the online cohort.

If enabled, the rule must be applied on the student's packaging page and works in conjunction with any other enabled rules. You must also set custom control FA_COA_KEY, Sequence 6 to N (see configure cost of attendance rules).

You can choose to use only custom named rules without any other rules.

Create named rule

1. Go to Admin > STParm.

2. In Parameter Code enter FCPKCR.

3. In Parameter Value enter a short description for the rule. For example, Online Nursing.

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4. Click Add.

5. In Description and Long Description enter text to describe the rule.

6. Click Save.

7. Go to Admin > Refresh Data Cache.

Configure cost of attendance rules

Before setting up your first cost of attendance template, you need to tell Campus Cafe what traits about a student to consider. For example, you may tell Campus Cafe that a student’s cost of attendance varies by site because you have multiple campuses and the cost to attend each differs. Or you may charge different tuition for different majors so you tell Campus Cafe to consider a student’s major when calculating cost of attendance.

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter FA_COA_KEY.

3. Click the pencil.

4. Adjust each Parameter Value to align with your institution’s business practices. Refer to below table.

5. Click Save.

6. Go to Admin > Refresh Data Cache.

Establish cost of attendance

Once you’ve told Campus Cafe which student traits to consider when assigning a cost of attendance, you must define the expenses comprising the cost of attendance. You must create a cost of attendance for each discrete cost of attendance. For example, if your COA is different for nursing majors and journalism majors, you’ll need to create two COAs - one for nursing and one for journalism.

Because costs can change from year to year - for example, you increase tuition - you must create a cost of attendance for each federal aid year you plan to award aid.

As an alternative to creating a cost of attendance for a year, you can copy it from a previous year and then make any necessary adjustments.

1. Go to Financials > F/A Cost of Attendance.

2. Click New Code.

3. In Award Year select the federal financial aid award year.

4. Choose which students the COA applies to. You’ll only see student traits such as major or start date if you told Campus Cafe they applied to your institution.

   • Major Code: Select the major the COA applies to. Leave blank to apply this COA to any major without a specified cost of attendance. For students with multiple majors, Major 1 on the student’s currently active degree detail page determines the COA.

   • Start Date: If the cost of attendance changes within the award year, enter the date the cost of attendance is effective. The cost of attendance will apply to students with a degree start date equal to or later than this date provided the date falls within the award year.

   • End Date: If the cost of attendance changes within the award year, enter the date the cost of attendance is no longer effective.
     Grade Level: Select the grade level corresponding to the grade level on the student's ISIR.

   • Part Time Code: Select the enrollment load (full time, three-quarter time, half time or less than half time) for which the COA applies; this is associated with the PT-Code on the student's degree detail screen.

   • Student Site: Select the the student site for which the COA applies on the student's degree detail screen.
     Named COA Rule: Select the custom named rule. Students with this custom named rule assigned during packaging receive this COA.

5. Enter the cost of each expense comprising the cost of attendance. Your institution defines the cost of each item. The Federal Student Aid Handbook offers guidance on what to include in each allowance.

   • Tuition In State: Your institution’s tuition for state residents. If you don’t differentiate between in-state and out-of-state tuition, enter your tuition here and in tuition out state.

   • Tuition Out State: Your institution’s tuition for non-state residents. If you don’t differentiate between in-state and out-of-state tuition, enter your tuition here and in tuition in state.

   • Housing On Campus: The cost of living in institutional housing.

   • Housing Off Campus: The cost of living in private housing.

   • Housing With Parents: The cost of a student incurs living with parents.

   • Transportation On Campus: The cost of transportation for transportation between school, residence, and place of work for students living in institutional housing.
     Transportation Off Campus: The cost of transportation for transportation between school, residence, and place of work for students living in private housing.
     Transportation With Parents: The cost of transportation for transportation between school, residence, and place of work for students living with parents.

   • Misc On Campus: This allowance for students living on campus may be included in the COA only for students who are enrolled on at least a half-time basis. Miscellaneous personal expenses may include costs incurred by a student for a prior learning assessment (for example, an exam or a portfolio evaluation)

   • Misc Off Campus: This allowance for students living in private housing may be included in the COA only for students who are enrolled on at least a half-time basis. Miscellaneous personal expenses may include costs incurred by a student for a prior learning assessment (for example, an exam or a portfolio evaluation)

   • Misc With Parents: This allowance for students living with parents may be included in the COA only for students who are enrolled on at least a half-time basis. Miscellaneous personal expenses may include costs incurred by a student for a prior learning assessment (for example, an exam or a portfolio evaluation)

   • Books Equipment: The cost of books, materials and equipment the student needs during the study period.

   • Fees: The dollar amount for this expense as defined by the institution

   • Fees Out State: The dollar amount for this expense as defined by the institution

   • Estimated Loan Fees: Fees incurred by a student for taking federal loans.

6. Click Create.

Copy cost of attendance from another year

Because costs can change from year to year - for example, you increase tuition - you must create a cost of attendance for each federal aid year you plan to award aid. To save you time, Campus Cafe lets you copy costs of attendance from one year to another.

1. Go to Financials > F/A Cost of Attendance.

2. Click Copy Mode.

3. In Copy From Award Year select the year with the costs of attendance you wish to duplicate.

4. In Copy To Award Year select the year the costs of attendance will be created.
   
   

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   In this example we will duplicate the costs of attendance in financial aid year 2024 to the 2025 aid year.

5. Click Copy.