<p>I work at a public university in the IT department and support our Financial Aid department. Every few months we learn of a new federal requirement that we are required to implement or plan for. </p>
<p>While we understand the good intentions behind them (safeguard students, truth in lending, etc.) many are very difficult to implement and enforce or have unintended consequences.</p>
<p>For example, while we attempt to contact graduates to find out their employment status, many graduates never reply. How much time and effort do we need to spend tracking down former students who have moved several times?</p>
<p>There are also different rules for academic standing from the point of view of the academic side of the house, and the academic standing regulations for federal financial aid. We have a well-developed university policy on repeats; now the federal government is telling us their rules for repeats and it’s different. So we have to be aware of and inform students who are repeating a course that they can repeat it from an academic standpoint, but not receive any federal financial aid for the repeat, which then causes them to fall below full-time, which means they no longer qualify for some of their aid. It’s been a nightmare.</p>
<p>To make it worse, the regulations are passed with no understanding on what they mean in particular situations or how to interpret them in a practical way. And then we have to implement them all after we have already started awarding aid for the aid year with a reduced staff that has suffered from state budget cuts to higher education.</p>