THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TOOK HOME EQUITY OUT OF ITS FORMULA. WHY IS IT PART OF SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY'S CALCULATION OF ASSETS?
A: In the federal system, if there are two families making $30,000 a year and one lives in a $1 million house and one lives in a $60,000 house, they have equal eligibility for financial aid. That does not make sense, so we added home equity back into the assets. But we try to be fair by linking the assessment against home equity to the family's ability to borrow against it. Generally, families with nothing but home equity do not have much assessment against that equity.
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