Student Centric Model

PowerFAIDS has been redesigned to use a student-centric model, rather than an award year-centric model, allowing you to see the student's whole path at once.

Award Year Centric Model

Financial aid systems using an award year-centric model function so that student records are assigned to an award year and only exist in the award years in which they are assigned. Actions and tasks performed are done in a specific award year, and users must toggle between award years to fully access a student record.

Student Centric Model

In the student-centric model everything revolves around the student record. For year-specific items within a student record – such as the student’s aid package – you can easily switch between multiple years within the same record.

Academic years are a foundational element in the student-centric model. By allowing you to add multiple academic years to a single instance of the same student record, you can easily and quickly navigate to the academic year you need for that student, rather than recreating the student again and again within each award year.

In addition to ease of navigation, academic years also provide increased flexibility in awarding federal Title IV aid within nontraditional calendars. As the number of nontraditional programs has increased to provide more flexibility to students, academic years and award years can be two very different concepts, with academic calendars not always fitting neatly into the federal award year of July 1st to June 30th. By decoupling academic years from federal award years, PowerFAIDS simplifies this relationship. For each academic year you create in PowerFAIDS, you have the option to choose which award year it should be associated to by default, with even more granular control at the payment period level for each individual student, when needed.