New Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy to reduce financial aid

By Juana Esquivel
January 20th, 2010
Section: News

CSUN President Jolene Koester has approved a change in a financial policy that will prevent students with more than 150 attempted units from receiving financial aid in the fall semester.
In an e-mail sent to students last month, Dr. Terry Piper, vice president for Student Affairs said that beginning in the 2010-11 academic year, the Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy will not allow undergraduate students to receive financial aid if they have yet to graduate and attempted 150 units.

Post-baccalaureate students will not receive financial aid if they have attempted 125 percent of units toward their academic program, he added.

“The big change is that we are decreasing the amount of units you can take and be eligible for aid,” said Mary Ann Cummins, associate vice president for Student Access and Support Services.
The changed Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy decreases the number of maximum units eligible for financial aid from 180 to 150, Cummins said.

“The main goal is to help students understand that we are trying to get them to graduate in a timely manner and along with that is to use our financial aid allocation wisely so that it is spread across freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors,” Cummins said.
Christina Nguyna, a psychology mayor said the new policy will affect her future.

“I won’t be able to go school,” said Nguyna, 18. “I won’t have the money to go to school.”

Lily Vidal, director of Financial Aid and Scholarship department, sat on the committee that passed the new policy, and said that out of the  21,000 students who receive financial aid, 2,000 of them will be affected by the new policy.

The new policy does not mean a student will be expelled from the university,  Cummins said.

“I want to emphasize that a student will not be booted from school or anything like that, it just means that they won’t be eligible for financial aid after 150 units,” she said.
The previous policy allowed 180 maximum units to be eligible for financial aid, and it was changed to 150 units, giving students 30 extra units for degree programs that require 120 units to graduate, Cummins said.

The policy was not changed because of funding, she added.

“It is a policy that has been considered for some time and the reason is because we want students to graduate,” Cummins said.

The revised policy has students worried. CSUN student, Sarah Ung receives financial aid and said she does not like new policy.
“I think it is bad because a lot of people do need the money,” said Ung. “Without financial, it’s harder for a lot of people to go to school because we are not able to pay for it.”

She added she is not the only one from her family attending and her mother would have to pay more for tuition.

Both Vidal and Piper  stated it was important for students to take the right courses towards their desired degrees and to pass them to increase their financial aid eligibility.
In the e-mail, Piper also said attempted units include units passed and failed, units with no credit, withdraws, incomplete, units in progress, developmental course units, units that have been appealed and those that have been taken at another institution of higher education.

Vidal said in the past, 300 financial aid students had between 150 and 180 units and that the number is expected to decrease with the new policy. She added that there should be fewer students with less units in June 2010.

Vidal and Cummins said the policy offers an appeals process.

“We know something extraordinary can occur in a student’s life and we want to be sympathetic to that,” Cummins said.

However, Vidal warns that it is very difficult to appeal a student’s eligibility for financial aid.

“Very few will be successful,” she said. “It really has to be an urgent condition.”

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  • David

    Think this policy just snagged me — I’m a CSUN grad student who needed to take a year of pre-req’s in order to enter my grad program. The CSUN computer decided I should have my MA by now and denied my financial aid. The appeal process self-admits that most people who appeal will fail — whatever happened to presumption of innocence? I’ve basically found out that I’m fully on the hook for this year’s tuition, housing, books, et cetera and it’s less that 2 weeks before classes start. Damn.

  • Anonymous2

    Anonymous: If you were here when there was a Plan C (if you don’t what that is, no worries), you would’ve known the controversy surrounding what is now Plan R – the default GE plan for nearly every freshman, sophomore, and junior on campus. Students have never been in the dark about the classes needed for graduation. While the Degree Progress Report (DPR) and My Academic Planner (MAP) may sound new, the original Degree Audit Report System (DARS) has been available online to faculty and students since at least 2002 (I was here when it became more accessible to students). Since many departments do not require student advisement every semester, students must take the initiative to view their individual DPR in SOLAR and literally pick the classes from the list that would steer them toward graduation. For more information on DPR, log in to http://www.csun.edu/anr/degreeprogress/dpr.html.

    Sarah: As with many colleges/universities that accept AP credit (Caltech is one example that does not), units will count toward your unit total to determine your academic standing (remember how great it sounded to hear that first-semester freshmen would have sophomore standing because of all the AP credits?). The difficulty with AP credits, however, lies in exams that do not easily fit into any DPR category, e.g., Music Theory, Chinese, Psychology – those will not count toward graduation unless they fit into your DPR. To be fair, most incoming freshmen will not have this knowledge due to lack of research, but realize also that if it is really true that you are cut off from financial aid solely because of excess units from AP credits, your financial appeal is likely to be granted.

  • Anonymous

    In my opinion, the only way the CSUs can avoid losing more money during this time of budget cuts in the short term is to make sure every single one of their students graduates in four years (at the most). People forget that the CSUs are the most highly-subsidized universities in the entire USA, so for every student taking six years to graduate with a four-year degree is more money lost for the school. Why does it take CSUN students so long to graduate? For a number of reasons. First of all, the sheer fact that you are one amongst 36,000 makes it extremely difficult to get into the classes you need. CSUN should step up their admission standards and refuse to admit anyone who has less than a 2.5 GPA (C+ average), for example. The second reason I hear a lot from CSUN students is the fact that the student advisors who are supposed to help students graduate are very inconsistent. So many people have told me that their advisors give them misinformation on what GE requirements they need, making them have to take extra classes. That brings me to another thing: the CSUs need to drastically reduce the number of GE requirements because the number is way too high. In most liberal arts colleges GEs stop after your freshman year. At CSUN your GEs don’t end until the middle of your junior year. And considering how the average GE class has over 50 students (meaning the profs will never know your name or help you out) there really isn’t any reason to have them. All of this causes students to be over the 150 credit mark. I know many people will disagree with me, but I think it’s a wonderful idea to make students graduate after obtaining over 140 units. No one, I repeat NO ONE, should be in undergrad for over five years to get a four-year degree. That way the schools won’t have to spend as much money and students won’t have to spend as much of their money on classes they don’t need and such. But add in there better advisors who make sure every single student graduates on time.

    This article should be front-page news on the Sundial. Students need to know what their conditions will soon be like.

  • Sarah

    This new policy is ridiculous and insulting to those of us to entered college with AP credits. Even though they cleared me from next to none of my GE requirements, they still count against me in terms of this policy. I’m in my third year of college and have 120 units completed. Perhaps if we want to institute a policy like this, we should also reevaluate our pointless GE requirements that keep us here far longer than need be.