What Makes Financial Aid for Competency Based Education Challenging?
Competency Based Education (CBE) is an outcomes-based approach to education. Rather than measuring learning based on seat time, it is evaluated on mastery of subject matter, thereby decoupling seat time from academic progress. Unfortunately, financial aid management systems have been designed with structured enrollment periods, which does not align with the way a CBE program is intended to function.
Financial Aid departments supporting flexible enrollment models like CBE frequently are constrained by limited budgets, resources, and systems that are incapable of supporting such models. So, they typically revert to largely-manual processes. While managing the current load can be painful enough, institutions today often are looking to cut costs and increase enrollments in their CBE programs. This results in financial aid departments struggling to keep pace.
How Regent Education Addresses the Challenge
Regent Education is the leading provider of SaaS solutions that automate financial aid for traditional academic years, borrower-based academic years, and CBE using standard and nonstandard terms and non-term enrollment models.
Regent’s financial aid software offers institutions the ability to automate financial aid verification, packaging, and disbursement processes to scale enrollments, grow tuition, reduce the risk of non-compliance, and improve student service.
Our clients have seen 20-60% reduction in back-office staffing due to a dramatic reduction in manual processes. Our automation extends to:
- Advanced active ISIR review logic
- CBE packaging and repackaging
- Cost-of-Attendance (COA) adjustments
- Disbursement eligibility checks
- Transmission processes with the US Department of Education
- Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) processes
- Automated R2T4 and refund processing
- Document management
- Student communications and notifications
Regent Education was architected from the ground up to simplify the most-complex financial aid scenarios. It’s why 25% percent of the top 20 online programs in the US partner with Regent Education to automate their financial aid processes.
Is it Time to Rethink Financial Aid for Your CBE Program?
Here are some helpful resources:
- 5 Steps to Rethinking Financial Aid for Flexible Enrollment Programs, Including CBE
- Brandman University Case Study
- Regent Award CBE Foundations, for emerging programs
- Regent Award, for larger programs
Contact Us if you’d like to learn more about how Regent Education can help you rethink financial aid for your program.