<p>suppose Smith has adopted an internal policy concerning unemployment & the exercise of p.j. They recognize that these are hard times and they are getting a lot of calls about parents who have lost their jobs, so they create some sort of policy and internal formula to apply in all cases </p>
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<p>Actually, schools are not allowed to establish policies with respect to PJ (at least for federal aid purposes - they can do whatever they want with their own money). Federal regulations expressly prohibit schools from applying PJ to a class of students … every single PJ must be determined on its own merits & schools cannot make policy relating to “every” situation. The training for unemployment adjustments provided by ED made this extremely clear. Every unemployed family must be reviewed and assessed on its own merits and schools are unable to establish internal policies regarding how unemployment (or any other PJ situation) will be treated. I know that this may not seem like a big deal to those outside the financial aid field, but it actually is very important. It makes the job of reviewing PJ more difficult, and it keeps it an art rather than a science.</p>
<p>Thank you for the information about the unemployment situation. </p>
<p>I think that the school could still adopt a policy that would flag files for possible next-step review, and then do the review on their own (whether or not asked by the parent). Perhaps that flagged file would come up for review every time there was income from unemployment insurance – or perhaps it would be triggered by a certain combination of factors (such as for family incomes within a certain range).</p>
<p>The point is, that wouldn’t be making the PJ determination, but it would be a way of spotting cases where such an evaluation would be in order. It might trigger the passing of the file from one level to the next within the office – that is, I assume that lower level staff in the financial aid office can key in data into forms, but you would want the actual PJ determination to be made by higher-level staff – so again, it makes sense to create a system that automatically flags appropriate cases.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the staff has to handle thousands of applications within a very short time frame. So I am just saying that if the school’s policy is to meet 100% need and to increase aid in cases of hardship, it is more efficient to be proactive than to send out a bunch of award letters that are likely be insufficient and prompt requests for appeal or review.</p>
<p>As far as I know, the federal regs don’t prohibit schools from applying PJ without a specific request from the parents-- it only requires that the schools properly document requests. When the school are already seeking extra documentation via their own forms, the CSS Profile and IDOC, the documentation may already be there for them to see very clearly.</p>