Publication Date: July 25, 2012
| DCL ID: | GEN-12-12 |
Subject: Financial Aid Shopping Sheet for 2013-14
Summary: This letter announces the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet format and requests institutional commitment to use this format.
Dear Colleague:
We are writing to share the attached Financial Aid Shopping Sheet (Shopping Sheet) and to request that your institution adopt this format to deliver financial aid offer information to your students beginning with the 2013-14 award year. The Secretary of Education released the Shopping Sheet on July 24, 2012, at http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/guid/secletter/120724.html), and requested college presidents to voluntarily adopt it.
We developed the Shopping Sheet as directed by Section 484 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (Public Law 110-315) to serve as a model format for financial aid award letters. We developed the Shopping Sheet in cooperation with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The development of this form is described on our Model Financial Aid Offer Form Web page at: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/guid/aid-offer/index.html. In addition, we are now discussing with financial aid software providers the development of software to help you deliver the Shopping Sheet. In the coming months, we plan to share additional information on this activity.
We are confident you will find that the attached Shopping Sheet format is a useful tool for distributing financial aid offer information to your students. We recommend that you use the Shopping Sheet, and we ask that, if you do so, you confirm your intention to use the Shopping Sheet format by e-mailing ShoppingSheet@ed.gov with your institutional name and your institution’s Office of Postsecondary Education Identification Number.
In addition, the Shopping Sheet will help those institutions that receive Federal funds under the military and veterans educational benefits programs to meet a disclosure responsibility that will arise as a consequence of Executive Order 13607. The Order directs the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to require those institutions to provide each of their prospective veteran and service member students with a personalized and standardized form describing the cost of the educational program and the amount of that cost that may be covered by available Federal education benefits and financial aid. The Shopping Sheet provides this kind of information. The Order is available at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-05-02/pdf/2012-10715.pdf.
Thank you for your continued efforts to provide clear information to inform students’ education choices. Please direct any questions about the Shopping Sheet to ShoppingSheet@ed.gov.
Sincerely,
David A. Bergeron
Acting Assistant Secretary
for Postsecondary Education