To assure that your Scholarship and Grant Program Rules remain current, please record this document on your TOPS Bulletin index and retain it with your manual.

At its meeting held on July 17, 2002, the Louisiana Student Financial Assistance Commission (LASFAC) approved final rule that changes the file format for student academic data submitted by postsecondary institutions to the Office of Student Financial Assistance, beginning with the Fall 2002 Term or Semester (1S2003/1T2003).

Louisiana Administrative Code (LAC)
Title 28
EDUCATION
Part IV. Student Financial Assistance Higher
Education Scholarship and Grant Programs

Chapter 19. Eligibility and Responsibilities of Postsecondary Institutions

...

§1903. Responsibilities of Postsecondary Institutions

A. Certification of Student Data.

1. Through the summer term of 2002, upon Upon request by LASFAC, and for the purpose of determining an applicant's eligibility for a program award, an institution will report the following student data:

a.. admission and full-time undergraduate enrollment; and
b. eligibility for, or enrollment in, a course of study leading to initial teacher certification; and
c. enrollment in math or chemistry as a major while pursuing teacher certification; and
d. graduate or undergraduate enrollment in wildlife forestry or marine science; and
e. cumulative college grade point average; and
f. cumulative college credit hours earned;
g. academic year hours earned.

2. Effective the fall semester of 2002, upon request by LASFAC, and for the purpose of determining an applicant's eligibility for a program award, an institution shall report the following student data:

a. admission and full-time undergraduate enrollment; and
b. eligibility for, or enrollment in, a course of study leading to initial teacher certification; and
c. enrollment in math or chemistry as a major while pursuing teacher certification; and
d. graduate or undergraduate enrollment in wildlife, forestry or marine science; and
e. semester hours attempted;
f. semester hours earned;
g. semester quality points earned; and
h. resignation from the institution or withdrawal from all courses.

B. - G. ...

Note: Regulatory changes are underlined.

This change will allow the Office of Student Financial Assistance to compute the cumulative grade point average for all students awarded under the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS), in accordance with state statute. The information in this bulletin and the enclosed new file format must be implemented for student academic information submitted to LOSFA for the Fall 2002 Term or Semester (1S2003/1T2003). The existing file format should be used until that time, i.e. for submission of summer 2002 term grades.

Below are CRITICAL notes and instructions that all schools will need to follow for this conversion to be successful. Please ensure that the new file format and these instructions are shared with your technical support staff.

1. Schools will submit hours attempted, hours earned and quality points earned on ALL undergraduate students with high school graduation dates after 1996, and to include all professional school students that are receiving TOPS funds. Schools may choose to exclude students who are classified as non-residents. Having data on all undergraduate students will allow LOSFA to complete processing for the occasions when retroactive awards are made, students are dually enrolled, cross-registered, or errors in eligibility are corrected.

2. Schools will submit hours attempted, hours earned and quality points earned for each term individually. No cumulative totals are to be submitted to LOSFA. Beginning with submission of 1S/2003 or 1T/2003, terms to be submitted will include a summer term, which precedes an initial eligible fall term, all regular quarters/semesters, and other summer sessions. Intersession hours and quality points earned between fall and spring semesters will be included and reported with spring. Intersession hours and quality points earned between spring and summer or summer and fall will be included and reported with summer. If a student earns hours during an intersession before or after a summer term, but does not attend summer school, the data would be reported as a summer term.

3. Schools will submit hours attempted, hours earned and quality points earned for all courses attempted and earned during the term. Regardless of a school's specific academic policies, LOSFA will count remedial/developmental credits and repeated course credits. Neither repeated courses nor their grades will be deleted from the students' TOPS cumulative hours or grade point averages. Do not report Advanced Standing or Advanced Placement credit hours in the semester totals. These hours will not be used by LOSFA to determine continuation criteria for required TOPS GPA. Correspondence courses that are recorded within a specified semester should be included with that semester's data transmission to LOSFA.

4. Schools will submit quality points in whole numbers only. If grades of "+" or "-" are assigned at the school, they must use the quality point associated with the grade as if there were no "+" or "-" assigned. For example quality points for a grade of A- would be reported as 4, or a B+ would be reported as 3, etc.

5. Schools will submit hours attempted for every course in which a grade of A, B, C, D, or F is earned. These are the hours from which the semester and cumulative grade point averages for TOPS will be determined. Incompletes or "I" grades are addressed in item #9.

6. Schools will submit hours earned for every class in which a grade of P, S, A, B, C, or D is earned. These are the hours from which the TOPS full-time continuation requirements will be determined.

7. The Student Enrollment Status (ACADSTAND field) is an existing field that is used in both academic information reporting and payment request file formats. For the purposes of submitting academic information, schools should send only one of the following statuses:

a. 00 - Continuous Enrollment
b. 10 - Officially Resigned
c. DU - Dually Enrolled
d. XE - Grades available for Exchange Student

8. Schools will submit corrections to any previously submitted reports in this format, either individually or in batch, through the web portal. We do not recommend retransmitting exact duplicates of student records. We recommend that only files that have corrected information be submitted. (See item #9 for special instructions for correcting Incomplete or "I" grades.) When reporting corrections, the Student Enrollment Status (ACADSTAND) should be submitted as "GR".

9. Schools will report the total number of hours in which a student receives an Incomplete or "I" grade in a new, separate field (described as the "Incomplete Hours" field) and indicate the semester or term in which those hours are recorded. This will enable LOSFA to notify the student that their TOPS renewal will be pending until all "I" grades are completed. Once "I" grades are converted to a permanent grade, schools should submit corrected grade reports electronically through the TOPS Web Portal. Once the correction is submitted and the student is determined eligible, a payment request may follow, if applicable. This can be done via batch or individual entry. Corrections to Incomplete grades, as well as any other grade corrections, should be submitted timely to ensure students' eligibility is correctly determined. We would recommend that a procedure be established at your school to ensure that all grade corrections made to students' transcripts automatically trigger a correction file transmission to LOSFA.

10. Schools should create a new and separate file or copy the existing file to accommodate this revised format. Schools are strongly encouraged not to delete, expand or overlay the existing file format in the unlikely event we would have to revert back to it in an emergency. The school will receive instructions from LOSFA when it is safe to delete the previous file format.

11. SPECIAL POPULATIONS - LOSFA will not be collecting academic information from out of state institutions. Schools that have special agreements with ineligible institutions, such as National Student Exchange, Study Abroad or ISEP, will be required to submit the required information in the required format as soon as the transcript information from the other school is received.

12. Campuses of the Louisiana Technical College are now required to submit all academic information in this format. It is our understanding that all clock hour programs have been converted to credit hour programs, which will allow reporting in Hours Earned, Hours Attempted and Quality Points.

13. The Program Type Field is to indicate if the student is enrolled in an academic program or a technical program. All students enrolled in an academic program within an academic institution are instructed to have the "Program Type" flag programmed as "A". Technical College Campuses are instructed to have the "Program Type" flag set as "T". PLEASE NOTE: Academic Institutions that offer non-academic programs in which TOPS students are enrolled must change the flag on each of these student's files in the "Program Type" field to a "T".

14. It is our plan to convert to the new file format on Friday, October 18, 2002. All student academic information existing in-house in the former file format will be converted by LOSFA to mirror the new file format prior to that date. This conversion will not put students' eligibility in jeopardy. In converting the existing files from grade point average to quality points, the quality points are rounded up to favor the student. This information will be displayed through the TOPS Web School Portal for your benefit.

15. An additional field is being added to the file for the school to report the ethnic or race code for each student. This is a necessary addition due to the many legislative requests we receive for statistics that include this information. Schools must report this in the codes designated. If these codes are different from those used at your institution, convert to our recognized code in the transmission of this data.

16. A public information and training meeting to address questions pertaining to this change in procedure is scheduled for September 16. We would strongly encourage the technical staff responsible for programming and transmitting this data to attend. An invitation is enclosed.

LOSFA will notify each student, in writing, explaining this change and that their TOPS Grade Point Average for the TOPS Program may differ from their institutional Grade Point Average and why. Questions that the school receives regarding a student's TOPS eligibility and/or TOPS Grade Point Average should be directed to the LOSFA Public Information and Communication Division at 1-800-259-5626, ext. 1012 or locally 922-1012.

TPYAI01
TOPS COLLEGE ACADEMIC INFORMATION REPORTING FORMAT

*
1 = Field definition and name change
2 = Name Change only
3 = New Field