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Volume XCVIV, Number 9	University of Southern California	Wednesday, July 17, 1985
New financial aid policy limits undergrads to nine semesters
Students won’t be notified until ‘final decisions’ are made
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rtiinougn many students will be pleased with the early arrival of their Financial Aid Offer Letters, the documents may bring some unpleasant surprises to fifth- and sixth-year undergrads.
By Stacey Schmeidel
The Office of Financial Aid and the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid have approved a plan that will eliminate an undergraduate's financial aid eligibility after nine semesters.
"The policy is a result of requests made several years ago by the federal government for all colleges and universities to come up with guidelines for satisfactory academic progress for students who are receiving federal financial aid funds like Pell Grants and work study," said Dr. Larry Singer, a USC chemistry professor and chair of the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid. "What our committee did was to extend those guidelines to include university aid as well."
Singer said the plan was developed in order to "encourage students to move through their academic program.
"We'd like to get students back along the four-year track," Singer said. "In the end, after students are fully aware of these guidelines and are making their
Improvements in Financial Aid Office facilitate packaging process
Financial aid applicants should be encouraged by the fact that the financial aid packaging process is "moving along quickly" and students are being packaged "significantly more efficiently" than they were last year, said Frank Tarquinio, Director of Financial Aid.
As of July 9, Tarquinio said, applications of 5,395 continuing and new students had been evaluated and 4,673 Letters of Offer had been sent out. Tarquinio said it was difficult to determine the exact number of students who applied for aid since many new students who applied early in the year later decided not to attend USC. In addition, he said, many students' applications are still incomplete.
"There's been a situation on this campus," Tarquinio said, "where students do not respond quickly to notification of incomplete documentation in their files. There haven't been any consequences," he added. "We bend over backwards to accommodate the students."
Tarquinio said that at this point in the year, it takes 10 days to evaluate a student's file once it is complete.
This quicker evaluation process is a result of several improvements that have been made in the Financial Aid Office since last year, Tarquinio said.
"In the first place," Tarquinio said, "we've now got a document tracking system that allows a counselor to see if a student's file is complete just by looking it up on the computer." With this new system, Tarquinio explained, a financial aid counselor can tell if a specific part of a student's financial aid application — a parent's 1040, for example — has been received by the Financial Aid Office, even if the document hasn't reached the student's file or if the file has been misplaced.
In addition, the university has obtained a Financial Aid Needs Analysis System (FANAS), an automated evaluation system that picks up a student's financial aid data from the College Scholarship Ser-
(Continued on page 2)
academic plans accordingly, we feel that this will be in the students' best interests."
Singer pointed out that the new policy does not automatically cut off a student's aid after nine semesters. A draft of the policy indicates that certain exceptions can be made for transfer students, part-time students, and "students who participate in certain time-demanding University-sponsored activities such as intercollegiate athletics, marching band and Student Senate."
In the case of special circumstances, Singer added, students may file an appeal with the Financial Aid Eligibility Committee. Singer would not estimate on how long the appeal process might take, but said that his committee would "urge that the Financial Aid Office would set up a machine that would meet the needs of students in a timely fashion.
"Our plan," Singer said, "is that the policy will go into effect this Fall and will begin to be implemented in the Spring of 1986." The policy, he added, was to have been announced months ago, but there have been delays because "final decisions on implementation need to be made," he said.
The "final decisions" center on whether current fifth- and sixth-year undergraduates will be ineligible for aid this year, said Frank Tarquinio, Director of Financial Aid. "The Academic Progress Policy is very complicated and it will have a significant impact on this campus," Tarquinio said. "We need to determine what's to be done with current USC students — whether they're to be included in the policy right away, or whether they're to be 'grandfathered out.'
"Obviously, if the immediate implementation of this proposal would cause 50 percent of the students on financial aid to drop out of school, then we won't do it that way," Tarquinio said. He would not speculate on what an
acceptable drop out percentage would be.
Tarquinio said he did not know how many fifth- and sixth-year undergraduates there were at USC. However, University Information Specialist Evangeline Week estimated that there are 442 continuing fifth-and sixth-year students returning for classes in the fall. "But this is only continuing students," she said, "people who have been at USC for five or six years. Keep in mind that this figure doesn't include transfer students or people who left school and then came back."
Because of this. Singer is strongly in favor of a phasing in of the program and a grandfathering out of current fifth- and sixth-year undergraduate financial aid recipients.
"A certain amount of thoughtfulness and consideration has to be used here," he said. "We're not trying to hamper anyone from getting a degree, and we're not trying to pull the rug out from under anyone."
Although Singer said his committee will "strongly urge" the Financial Aid Office to phase out current fifth- and sixth-year undergraduates, there is no word as to when decisions on the program's implementation will be made. Until this is decided, one financial aid counselor said, the financial aid applications of students who may not qualify for aid under the new proposal will not be evaluated.
In addition, Tarquinio said, students will not be notified about the new policy until the final decisions about its implementation are made.
The Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid plans to make students aware of the new policy, Singer said, through an advertisement in the Orientation issue of the Daily Trojan and through notices posted at fee bill payment stations at registration. "We can't just suddenly change the ground rules on the students," Singer said.
Looking for a cruiser? USC Security knows where the bikes are!
Department plans to dispose of unclaimed vehicles by next week
Missing a bike? You may want to check with USC Security to see if your ten-speed or cruiser is one of the bicycles the department has been holding for the last six months.
According to USC Securitv Officer Dexter Thomas, the USC Security Department has held a number of bicycles in storage for over six months without receiving any claims of ownership on them. The bicycles have not been reported as stolen property, and USC Security has been unable to locate owners through department records.
USC Security can no longer afford to store these vehicles, and the department is "taking immediate steps to dispose of the bicycles," Thomas said. "We usually donate them to a church or some other organization," he added.
A full list of all the bicycles held by Unversity Security is available for inspection at the USC Security Office in Parking Structure A. Students who think that their bike may be one of those being held must furnish adequate proof of ownership at the Security Office by next Wednesday, July 24, Thomas said. Thomas said that a receipt of purchase is the best proof of ownership, but also added that an accurate and detailed description of the bike, a registration slip, or a key to the bike's lock would also suffice.
The University Security Office is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call 743-6000.
Next week USC Security will dispose of dozens of unclaimed abandoned bicycles which were collected from around the campus several months ago.