Students receiving financial aid must maintain Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic Progress (FASAP). The Financial Aid Office at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College monitors a student’s academic progress as a condition of eligibility when the student applies for financial aid and at the end of each Spring Semester. These requirements are applied to a student’s entire academic history at A-B Tech, including transfer hours from other schools that apply to the student’s program and including periods when financial aid was not received (e.g. courses are taken through A-B Tech in high school). A student is considered to be making Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic Progress when the following three requirements are satisfied:
- Qualitative Standard (Cumulative Grade Point Average) – A student must maintain a minimum cumulative grade point average of 2.0.
- Quantitative Standard (Completion Rate) – A student must maintain a minimum cumulative completion rate of 50% between 1-29 completed hours. A student must maintain a minimum cumulative completion rate of 67% with 30+ completed hours.
- Maximum Timeframe – A student must successfully complete the program of study within its timeframe. Federal regulations specify that the timeframe may not exceed 150% of the published length of the program. When students exceed the timeframe for their programs of study, they are no longer eligible to receive financial aid. However, students can submit an appeal to the Financial Aid Appeals Committee to have their eligibility extended if there are extenuating circumstances.
Monitoring FASAP occurs once annually after the spring semester. The exception to this is if a student is ONLY in a certificate or diploma that requires less than one year to complete. Those individuals will be calculated after each semester.
Every course attempted with a final grade or transferred into the College will be factored into the SAP calculation
- Passing grades are: A, B, C, D, P, P1, P2
- Failing grades are: F and R
- Courses attempted but not completed are: I and W
- Courses transferred from another institution are courses attempted and completed but carry no weight in the GPA are: T, TR
Students may repeat a course until it is completed with a passing grade, however, each attempt is factored into the FASAP Calculation.
At the end of the spring semester the College will check the FASAP of all students who received aid over the past year. Students will enter one of the following statuses after the calculation:
- Satisfactory – The student is meeting the above-listed terms and remains eligible for aid.
- Suspension – The abovementioned terms have not been met and eligibility has been lost (Students in this category are eligible for appeal)
- Continued Probation – Students who have appealed and have met the terms of probation but have not reestablished FASAP conditions
- Termination – The student was on a probation plan and failed to meet the terms of the probation (Students in this category are not eligible for appeal)
Students will receive an e-mail to their student e-mail account and a banner notification in their student self-service portal notifying them of their standing immediately after the FASAP calculation has been completed.
Students in a suspension status are eligible to appeal. A successful appeal will outline the mitigating circumstances that prevented the student from being successful with documentation that supports the student’s claim from an official source (doctor’s office, counselor, or other professional). Documentation submitted by a friend or parent is not acceptable. Once this portion of the process is reviewed, the student is referred to a counselor to establish a success plan that will help the student reenter FASAP as quickly as possible. Once this plan is approved by the Financial Aid Office the student is moved to a Probation status for the next scheduled semester. The student is required to attend in that term. If they do not, the account is reverted to a suspension status and the student is eligible to appeal again.