Net Price Calculators
To comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), all colleges and universities that participate in Title IV federal student aid programs are required to have Net Price Calculators on their websites. Institutions have many choices of how to respond to this new requirement. AidCalc offers an affordable Net Price Calculator solution custom tailored to the particular needs and specifications of your institution.
Our calculator is designed around your actual costs and financial aid criteria for the upcoming academic year, to provide your prospective students with a reliable and accurate estimate. Eligibility for federal and state aid, institutional need based and merit based grant and scholarship funding is included.
See how our NPC service can serve your prospective students. Contact us today to schedule a personal demonstration.
Accurate
- Net Price estimates based on your institution's actual aid eligibility criteria
- Accurate calculation of institutional merit-based aid
- Streamlined to ask the minimum number of questions for full accuracy
- Include estimates for federal Direct Loans and self-help awards
Customized
- Fully customizable: you can specify the text, layout, and any supplemental questions or content
- Custom look, styling, fonts, colors, and branding
- Serve part-time, transfer, graduate or other student populations.
- Add marketing text, contact collection, multilingual options and more
Supported & Managed
- Developed and implemented to your specifications by our team, no self-service setup required
- Maintained and supported by our staff, including any regulatory updates
- Flexible and affordable, with web hosting included in our solution
- Advanced usage analysis and analytics available
The Net Price Calculator Requirement
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (
HEOA) requires institutions to
"develop a net price calculator to help current and prospective students, families, and other consumers estimate the individual net price of an institution of higher education for a student."
Who is affected?
Your college or university is required to have a Net Price Calculator if your students receive Title IV aid and you enroll first-time, full-time undergraduate students. This includes students seeking Bachelor's Degrees, Associate's Degrees, or undergraduate certificates that are Title IV eligible. Even institutions without websites must fulfill this requirement. The calculator can be posted on your institution's website or on a third party website.
What exactly is required?
Your institution can choose from three options when developing your Net Price Calculator:
- Use the federal template
- Develop your own customized NPC
- Outsource the development of your NPC to a third party, such as AidCalc
No matter which of these options you choose, the following input and output elements must be included in your NPC:
Input:
"Data elements to approximate the student's Estimated Family Contribution (EFC), such as income, number in family, and dependency status or factors that estimate dependency status." Either Federal Methodology or Institutional Methodology may be used.
(source:
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/resource/net_price_calculator.asp).
The calculator may also contain input elements such as high school GPA and standardized test scores that an institution uses to determine eligibility for non-need-based aid.
An AidCalc NPC asks the minimum number of questions necessary for full, accurate calculation of Federal and (if applicable) Institutional EFC. We can also include as many custom questions as are required to determine eligibility for scholarships and grants based on academic merit or other factors not included in EFC calculation.
Output:
Estimated Cost of Attendance Elements, including at minimum:
- Tuition and fees
- Room and board (living on campus, off campus, or with parents)
- Books and supplies
- Other expenses (including personal expenses and transportation)
This means that both direct, known costs charged by the institution and indirect, estimated costs determined by the individual student must be included in the net price. An AidCalc NPC can help your students distinguish between these different types of costs.
Estimated total grant aid, including both need-based and merit-based aid. AidCalc can work with your institution to provide the most accurate possible estimation.
Estimated Net Price
This means that Direct Loans, Federal Work-Study, and other self-help aid included in your financial aid packages may not be considered part of net price. However, AidCalc NPCs give additional results including these awards, to more accurately reflect the affordability of your institution.
Other Output Information
The calculator output is also required to include certain disclaimers, and the percentage of first-time full-time undergraduate students who received grant aid.
When does the requirement take effect?
Net Price Calculators must be available as of October 29, 2011. The URL (web address) for your NPC must be reported with your institution's IPEDS data. Consider updating your Net Price Calculator to a fully custom hosted solution from AidCalc, or solution is affordable and easy to implelment, contact us today!
Where can I learn more?
We would be happy to answer any questions you may have by phone at 617-863-0654 or email at
info@aidcalc.com.
You may also want to take a look at the
Net Price Calculator Resource Center developed by the Association for Institutional Research to help answer colleges' and universities' questions about the NPC requirement.