<p>The Dear Colleague letter does not say that a school must use 0 for income. It is difficult to justify giving a 0 EFC to someone who made $50,000 in the first 5 months of the year & then lost his job … when the next guy made $36,000 all year & doesn’t get a 0 EFC. Schools will still do what they feel is best for each situation.</p>
<p>I work at a school in an area with one of the country’s highest rates of unemployment. If we made every unemployed student’s efc 0 … and the efc of every family with an unemployed parent 0 … we would be giving about $1.00 SEOG to each student with a 0 efc. Not to mention that our institutional funding would not be able to help in any measurable way, as it would be stretched so thin. We still have to be able to figure out who is the neediest & assist as best we can to maximize awards. Auto-0 based on loss of job does not give us the true picture.</p>