After you file your FAFSA and receive your financial aid package from your school either you or your parents might be unhappy with the results. When this happens your first instinct might be to write an appeal to the financial aid office. While this might be the right move in some situations other people should think twice before making a call to the college.

The American Society of Safety Engineers awards a number of scholarships to full-time undergraduate students pursuing a degree in occupational safety and health or closely related field.

The Program Integrity Issues Negotiated Rulemaking (negreg) Committee discussed several more of the 14 integrity issues it will cover this week. Wednesday’s discussions finished the topic of incentive compensation begun the day before, then moved on to state authorization, verification, and agreements between higher education institutions. This is the first round of program integrity negreg meetings where panelists discuss issues and possible solutions in general terms. Negotiators will discuss draft regulatory language proposed by the Department during subsequent negreg meetings.

One of the most popular benefits of a NASFAA membership is our AskRegs service. Staffed by the financial aid experts in NASFAA’s division of Professional Assessment, Training, and Regulatory Assistance, AskRegs gives NASFAA members personal assistance with regulatory or compliance questions. Many inquiries require research and/or consultation with the Department of Education. Where applicable, we cite regulations in our answers. This article discusses a recent question about the Net Price Calculator that AskRegs staff has fielded.

The Department of Education has posted the 2010-2011 Summary of Changes for the Application Processing System. This guide provides information about major changes to the 2010-2011 application processing system; the schedule for 2010-2011; the FAFSA, including information about ordering and distribution of FAFSA on the Web Worksheets; and the Central Processing System.

The Department of Education has posted the 2010-2011 Student Web Application Products Process Guide. This guide contains information about enhancements and other changes it is making in 2010-2011 to FAFSA4caster, the PIN Web site, and FAFSA on the Web.

Because of demand, the Department of Education is reopening registration for its Federal Student Aid Conference and has secured additional overflow hotels. Registration will be open until Friday, November 20th. The cutoff date to make a reservation for most of the overflow hotels is Monday, November 16th.

“Receiving financial aid appears to have a significant positive impact on the educational performance of college students from low-income families, but many higher-education institutions are bending to pressure to give aid to other students who do not necessarily need it, according to research scheduled to be discussed here this week at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education reports. “One study being presented here, based on data from the University of Oregon on its scholarship recipients, found that getting merit-based financial aid appeared to have a positive impact on students in terms of their first-year grades, with the boost being especially pronounced for students from low-income backgrounds.”

“Recruiters at the nation’s largest for-profit school are being accused of phony claims, lies, and deception,” Mother Jones reports. “Last week, Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group, announced that it had put aside $80 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit … Phoenix said its ‘compensation programs and practices were in compliance with the applicable legal requirements.’ … Phoenix is not the only for-profit university to get into trouble in recent years [but] Phoenix stands out with 420,000 students [and] $3.2 billion in federal aid last year.”

“Senator Mike Johanns, R-Neb., sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday, calling on Duncan to retract his recent letter advising colleges and universities to move toward a 100-percent government-run student loan delivery system,” RTT News reports. “‘The Obama administration seems intent on denying competition and ramming through a federally-run student loan system,’ Johanns said in his letter. ‘By encouraging institutions of higher learning to move quickly to a government-run system, it appears the White House is trying to end run Congress and strong-arm its way toward nationalizing the student loan industry.’”