Unemployment and EFC

NikkiiL
Thu, 21 May 2009 19:44:40 +0000

I had a meeting on this exact subject with my compliance officers and they are under the same belief that a school can decide to reduce a person’s EFC to zero IF they were the sole wage-earner for the household. Now, they also cautioned that this type of regulation is very subject to interpretation, so schol decisions on what the regulation means will vary from place to place (as is evident from mine and kelsmom’s information in this posting.) As always, Congress has placed the cart before the house and left Financial Aid Administrators grasping at straws trying to figure things out.

My area has also been hit hard by the current economy with thousands losing their jobs over the last couple of years…and we are a small community. While it may make it difficult to stretch SEOG and institutional funding as far as it needs to go, I don’t know how we could justify not zero’ing out the EFC on a single-wage earners FAFSA when they have lost their job suddenly and without warning. But it would be nice to have some additional guidance from the government.