Report from the Agency Liaisons
Elizabeth McDuffie, Chair

Florida
Office of Student Financial Assistance (OSFA)
Theresa Antworth

2004-05 Appropriations
State-funded financial aid programs have an appropriation of $458 million to expend on 20 programs for the 2004-05 academic year. Our largest merit program, Florida Bright Futures, expects to fund over 129,000 students; the largest need-based program, Florida Student Assistance Grants (FSAG), expects to serve over 100,000 students. One new tuition assistance program was authorized and funded this year serving over 600 resident undergraduate students at private institutions.

Web Applications at www.FloridaStudentFinancialAid.org
Our customer-friendly web homepage invites students to apply online with one application for all programs. This is our fourth year of operation. We are accepting and evaluating over 86,000 applicants per year. Postsecondary institutions participating in financial aid programs continue to appreciate the web processing of state financial aid, and enjoy its comprehensive reporting capabilities.

2005-06 Legislation and Budget
Currently, state appropriation and education committees are preparing for the 2005 Florida Legislative Session. Budget is a top priority after the natural disasters of four hurricanes in the fall of 2004. We await bills that may affect any financial aid programs.

Georgia
Shelley Nickel

A new online resource is now available to help Georgians plan, apply and pay for college. GAcollege411.org, which launched on February 14, 2005, is a one-stop shop for students and anyone else who wants to explore careers, compare Georgia colleges, apply to college, and learn about financial aid. This is a free service of the State of Georgia provided by the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC), the Office of the Governor, and many other Georgia partners.

Key components of GAcollege411.org include:

A component of GAcollege411.org that has generated a great deal of immediate interest is the test preparation section, which helps students prepare to take the SAT, ACT and GRE. The test prep provides tutorials, practice sessions, a vocabulary builder, test-taking tips and strategies, and timed SAT sample tests. Tutorials cover every subject area and question format on the new SAT, the ACT, and the GRE—including the new essay writing section of the SAT, administered for the first time in March 2005.

In coming months, GAcollege411.org will add other features—such as electronic transfer of transcripts and online applications—to help students, parents, high school counselors, and college administrators.

Since last summer, GSFC has conducted workshops, focus groups, and other activities to promote the site and to solicit input from students, high school counselors, and college financial aid officers. Representatives of those groups also participated in a beta test of the site in January. The insights and suggestions provided by our “user partners” have proven to be invaluable.

Kentucky
Michael Morgan

Go Higher, Kentucky! Web Portal
Kentucky’s one-stop, higher education and career planning website was launched October 21 at the Kentucky Counseling Association Conference in Louisville. Special guest speaker Margaret Causey, a guidance counselor with 30 years experience, discussed how Go Higher can make counselors’ jobs easier. Causey uses a similar system in the North Carolina public school system.

KHEAA’s training sessions on the GoHigherKY website have been very well received by school personnel. The GoHigherKY website includes tools such as the Student Planner, Career Portfolio, Online Admissions Applications and Financial Aid Estimators often found to be beneficial to students and high school counselors.

State Grant FY 2006 Award Amounts
The College Access Program (CAP) Grant maximum award amount for full-time students will increase to $1,700 in FY 2006. The hourly rate for less-than-full-time students will be $71 for semester-based institutions and $47 for quarter-hour institutions. The expected family contribution (EFC) for CAP Grant consideration will remain at 3850. The Kentucky Tuition Grant (KTG) maximum award amount will increase from $2,600 to $2,800.

Student Aid Delivery System
The new student aid system, ZipACCESS will be available in February 2005 to accept 2005-2006 ISIR data, award CAP Grant and KTG, and project KEES awards (if requested) and allow students to apply for scholarships.

Retrieving MYF Stafford Exit Records
ExitExpress is a new service designed especially for the convenience of our school partners. Through ExitExpress, KHEAA will retrieve exit data on behalf of schools using Mapping Your Future (MYF) Stafford exit counseling. Federal regulations require schools to forward exit counseling reports to guaranty agencies within 60 days of the exit counseling session. Schools using MYF's Online Student Loan Counseling with loans guaranteed by KHEAA can save time and money since they won't have to send this data to KHEAA. Schools may confirm data has been sent to KHEAA through their secure FAO Access Area from the Financial Aid Professionals page at http://mapping-your-future.org/services/fao.htm.

Schools may contact Tricia Crowe at tcrowe@kheaa.com or 502-696-7212 or Judy Lang at jlang@kheaa.com or 502-696-7225 for questions about loan counseling and other default aversion activities.

KHEAA/KHESLC Proposed Legislation
On November 15, the KHEAA/KHESLC Boards of Directors approved proposed legislation to increase KHESLC’s debt limit from $1.95 billion to $5 billion and authorized staff to discuss the proposal with the Executive Branch and potential legislative sponsors for introduction of the proposal during the 2005 Regular Session of the Kentucky General Assembly.

KHEAA/KHESLC Proposed Regulatory Amendments
The Board approved several proposed regulatory amendments, authorized staff to file the regulations with the Legislative Research Commission, and authorized the General Counsel to make changes on behalf of KHEAA as necessary and obtain adoption by the Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee.

P-16 Council
KHEAA Executive Director Dr. Joe L. McCormick is now a member of Kentucky's P-16 Council. The state P-16 Council was formed in 1999 by the Council on Post-secondary Education (CPE) and the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) with the purpose of jointly discussing policy matters that affect the progress of students from Preschool through 12th grade into the postsecondary education system.

Dr. McCormick currently serves on the Cradle to College Commission and the boards of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs (NCHELP) and the National College Access Network (NCAN).

Mississippi
Mary Jane Covington

The Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid is proud to announce the birth of their new on-line application which arrived at 12:00 a.m. on January 1, 2004, and not a moment too soon. This was definitely a labor of love. The web address is www.mississippiuniversities.com and then click on Financial Aid which is 6th in the list on the left. The on-line application is a universal application which allows the student to apply for all state aid programs via a single application. Once the on-line application is on our system, we send the student a PIN so that they may view their application status. This has proved to be a valuable tool for the student as they know exactly where they are in the award process, as well as when we disburse the funds to the schools. We are excited about the single on-line application as we currently administer 21 loan/scholarship programs and 4 grant programs, two of which are need-based.

We will be administering three new programs this year, all of which are teacher driven. The William Winter Alternate Route Teacher and the Critical Needs Teacher Alternate Route Loan/Scholarship are available for applicants who are not education majors, but recipients must express a desire to teach in Mississippi once their degrees are completed. It is available to juniors and seniors who have successfully passed the Praxis I. We are pleased to implement these two new programs and hope that it will further address the growing need for classroom teachers in Mississippi. The third program is the Mississippi Teacher Loan Repayment Program, which is for the current classroom teacher who has an alternate route teacher license and has an outstanding loan balance on the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). The maximum amount we will repay each year is $3,000.00.

For the 2003-2004 year, we awarded $9,140,994 in Loan/Scholarships and $20,228,403 in Grants for a combined total of $29,369,397. We anticipate taking a closer look at our all our programs to determine if there is a need for fine tuning as we strive to meet the changing needs of our state.

North Carolina
Elizabeth V. McDuffie

FAFSA Day – Saturday, February 19, 2005
The fourth annual FAFSA Day will be held on Saturday, February 19 in 30 locations around the state to provide free assistance completing the FAFSA form. Approximately 1,000 students have been served at FAFSA Day sites in recent years with over 200 volunteers assisting with the day. FAFSA Day is co-sponsored by the State Education Assistance Authority and NCASFAA.

Counselor Internships
NCSEAA is once again sponsoring a paid summer internship for school counselors in financial aid offices across the state. The internship has proven to be a great way for school counselors to learn the aid process; in addition, the aid offices benefit from the extra help with processing during the summer. Twelve campuses will serve as host institutions during the summer of 2005.

Financial Aid Reference Guide Available
NCSEAA’s comprehensive guide to financial aid resources, "Financial Aid for North Carolinians", was updated and distributed in November. Copies of the guide were distributed statewide to local high school libraries and school counselors, county libraries, financial aid directors and various state officials and agencies. The guide is also available online at www.CFNC.org/fabook.

South Carolina
Edward M. Shannon, III

SC Tuition Grants Program
The SC Tuition Grants Program is a “need-based” grants program that was enacted in 1970 by the SC General Assembly as a tuition equalization program to give South Carolina students the choice of attending a SC independent college. Not only does the grants program give South Carolina students the choice of attending the college that best meets their academic needs, it also saves the State of South Carolina millions of dollars each year. The savings result from attracting SC students into the SC independent college sector, thereby saving the automatic per student state tax subsidy that goes to all students attending SC public colleges regardless of financial need. The per-student state subsidy averaged $3,821 in the 2003-2004 fiscal year.

The SC Tuition Grants Program is funded solely by state appropriation with the exception of $885,940 that is received through the federal LEAP/SLEAP matching grant program.

The clients of the SC Tuition Grants Program are the students of South Carolina and their families, the 20 SC independent colleges participating in the grants program, all of the high schools located throughout the state, the members of the SC General Assembly, and the various state agencies overseeing the operation of a state program. The SC Tuition Grants Commission comes into contact with all of these constituents throughout the normal operating cycle of a fiscal year.

The day-to-day operation of the SC Tuition Grants Program includes the following:

The SC Tuition Grants Program is a sound investment for the State of South Carolina. The SC independent colleges attended by these students have total operating budgets of over $350 million and combined capital assets (physical plants and endowments) of over one billion dollars. Thus, the State’s base investment of $27.7 million in the SC Tuition Grants Program supports a $1.4 billion industry. Although the SC Tuition Grants Program receives only 3% of the total state dollars going to higher education, SC independent colleges educate 21% of our state’s students.

During 2004-2005, 12,300 awards averaging about $2,350 will be made to eligible South Carolina students attending the twenty SC independent colleges participating in the SC Tuition Grants Program. The maximum grant for the upcoming 2005-2006 award year has been set at $2,600 by the governing board of the grants program.

The 2005 SC General Assembly is currently in session and the SC Tuition Grants Commission has requested a total of $33.4 million for the grants program which is a $5 million increase over the prior year and would enable the maximum grant to be increased to $3,100 at all participating colleges.