Federal Pell Grant is Being Incorrectly Reduced to Amount of Unmet Need or Unmet Cost of Attendance (COA) (Doc ID 3012604.1)

Last updated on AUGUST 12, 2024

Applies to:

Symptoms

When packaging Pell in Aid Year 2025, the awarded Pell amount is being limited to the amount of unmet need and/or unmet COA, when that amount is less than the calculated Pell amount - whether the base calculated amount is the Maximum Pell amount, Minimum Pell amount, or the result from calculating  Maximum Pell minus Student Aid Index (SAI).  For instance, a student with need and/or COA completely filled will have Pell fail validation with edit 9111 indicating the student is fully packaged.

Although the Pell packaging rules have changed extensively starting in Aid Year 2025, the student is still "entitled" to the base calculated amount that is independent of any remaining need or remaining COA - similar to previous aid years when the unmet need or unmet coa was never included as a factor in determining Pell eligibility. For Aid Year 2025, this intended behavior is also reflected in the Pell processing flowchart linked in Note 2997208.1 - where the limiting of the scheduled Pell to the amount unmet need is only supposed to occur when the ISIR does *not* include either a Max Pell or Min Pell indicator.

The issue can be reproduced at will with the following steps (using the example of a student eligible for Minimum Pell):

1. Identify a student in Aid Year 2025 with the 'Min Pell Indicator' field populated on the Financial Aid > Federal Application Data > Correct ISIR records > SAI and Flags page (or query for ISIR_COMPUTED.SFA_MIN_PELLIND).
2. On Set Up SACR > Product Related > Financial Aid > Awards > Aggregate Aid Limits > Aggregate Aid Limit for 2025, verify the 'Minimum Pell Scheduled Award' field is correctly populated.
3. Among the group of students from step 1, identify a student with federal unmet need less than the 'Minimum Pell Scheduled Award' amount from the previous step; if querying, use STDNT_AWD_PER.FED_UNMET_NEED.
4. Navigate to Financial Aid > Awards > Award Processing > Assign Awards to a Student > Student Aid Package, and manually award the student a Pell item type, leaving the amounts at 0.
5. Click 'Validate' and note the assigned amount is the amount of the unmet need.
6. Click the 'Message' link to verify any validation edits; for students awarded 0 Pell, note message number 9111 - 'The student is fully packaged for this item type, and the award will be discarded'.
   
   
   
   

Changes

The issue occurs after applying all of the available fixes related to FAFSA Simplification up through and including the 31 fixes delivered in PeopleSoft Release Patchset (PRP) Patch 36159970: 2024-2025 FM ADDITIONAL UPDATES #3

Cause

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