Dept. of Ed limits Title IV funding for repeated courses

The Registrar’s Office takes proactive steps to align NAU repeat policies with new Title IV funding regulation; minimize funding impacts on students

Associate Registrar, Lucy Hegg, updated the Repeat Policy to help students successfully progress toward graduation and to minimize the negative impacts that unfunded, repeated courses may have on our students’ budgets.

In 2011, the Department of Education implemented new legislation that limited Title IV funding for repeated coursework which could negatively impact students who were repeating courses multiple times.  The NAU Registrar’s Office aligned its repeat policy with the new Department of Education legislation to eliminate student issues linked with the new funding restrictions.

Updated NAU policy

Students may repeat a course one time for grade replacement if the first attempt earned a D or F grade. The better of the two grades will be used in GPA calculations.

This new simplified policy:

• Is in line with federal financial aid requirements that might have been violated with the previous policy and could put student financial aid in jeopardy
• No longer has an 18 unit limit or the related GPA averaging which in some cases might not benefit students with a high number of cumulative units at NAU
• Students will no longer be able to enroll in a class that violates this policy which will keep students from spending a semester in a class that does not benefit them.

Previous Policy:

• Students were able to repeat a course twice for grade replacement when prior attempts earned a D or F grade, up to 18 units for their career at NAU.  Once a student had 19 or more units of repeated credit, the GPA for additional repeat attempts were averaged.. The better of the two grades were used in GPA calculations.

For more information about this policy and others, view the NAU academic catalog.  The Department of Education has also posted a Q&A site.