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Net Price Calculator

Matt Gillentine

June 13, 2011 18:31

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As you may know, the federal government has mandated that every institution that participates in Federal Student Aid programs must post a "Net Price Calculator" to their website. The government provides a free template, but most schools agree that the free template is a flawed solution that is not good for the school or the students. Good third-party solutions cost thousands of dollars per year, which is just not very feasible for institutions of our size. It would be very nice if Populi would develop a calculator that would exceed the minimum requirements and be a valuable tool to us. I am attaching a document with links to the federal requirement, and some of the third-party solutions we have found.

Net Price Calculator links.docx

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6 comments

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  Brendan O'Donnell June 13, 2011 19:16

  Matt,

  What are the flaws with the free gubbermint solution? I imagine the user interface is complete garbage. What else might be wrong with it?

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  Matt Gillentine June 13, 2011 19:37

  Our financial aid staff could probably answer that question better than I could, but here's what I know about it. The federal template calculator provides a rough estimate based only on federal aid. It does not allow us to include our merit-based aid or scholarships in the calculation. From what I understand, the biggest problem with the federal template is the overall accuracy. 

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  Brendan O'Donnell June 13, 2011 20:16

  Matt,

  Yeah, I checked out a few examples from the... I think it was the College Board link... and went through the NPC on some college websites. Amherst had a lot of Amherst-specific aid figured in to their NPC, for instance. So, I hear what you're talking about.

  A net-price calculator is a pretty big thing to tackle. And I can't really think of any areas of Populi where the NPC would reasonably fit in. Because it doesn't "guarantee" a certain aid package or really tie into any "real" information, it's a very discrete chunk of software... so it's of fairly limited utility to Populi as a whole.

  I'm certainly sympathetic to your quandary, though!

  Have your financial aid staff pile on to this feature request so we can better evaluate how useful it would be to the program as a whole.

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  Matt Gillentine June 13, 2011 20:28

  I understand. I know many of third-party companies market their calculator as a recruiting tool because they collect contact info from the students (optional) and make it possible to view reports of the data entered (something else the free template doesn't include). So I could possibly see a tie-in to the admissions area since the calculator might provide new prospects that weren't already in our database.

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  Brendan O'Donnell June 13, 2011 20:35

  Interesting. Well, since I'm not in a position to decide about these things, I'll wait until someone else weighs in. Price calculators are definitely a burly thing to implement, but if this is a way to make us more useful to multiple departments, it might be worth considering. Thanks for bringing this up!

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  Kenneth Law October 11, 2011 15:21

  Brendan,

  For what it is worth.  I was just handed a paper telling me that I have to make the calculator available to our students.  I agree that it would be very helpful if this was a feature included in Populi.  No doubt other schools would find this a valuable tool and be a plus for Populi as the company is marketed.

  Ken