Minnesota’s New Standard Financial Aid Offer Letter
For many students and families, comparing financial aid offers can feel like comparing apples to oranges. Colleges often use different formats, terminology, and cost breakdowns, making it difficult to understand the true cost of attendance and make informed enrollment decisions.
To address this challenge, the Minnesota Legislature passed theCollege Financing Literacy Act (CFLA) in 2025, directing the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE) to develop a statewide standard financial aid offer letter and standardized financial aid terminology. The goal is simple: provide students and families with clear, consistent, and transparent information about college costs and financial aid. This initiative grew from a desire to improve cost transparency in higher education and ensure that students receive consistent information in the often-murky financial aid process.
OHE is responsible for creating standardized financial aid offer templates and a common set of financial aid terms and definitions (which can be found on OHE’s website), one of the most significant components of the CFLA.
Institutions that participate in Minnesota's State Grant Program will be required to use these materials once implementation begins. According to OHE’s website, standard financial aid forms may be developed for four populations of students:
· Undergraduate students,
· Graduate students,
· First-time students, and
· Returning students.
The legislation is intended to help students compare financial aid offers across institutions more easily. Additionally, it intends to help students and families understand the difference between grants, scholarships, loans, and work-study. These goals should make it easier for students and families to identify both immediate and long-term college costs, and better estimate out-of-pocket expenses before making an enrollment decision.
Consistent with these goals, OHE intends to use plain language that improves student understanding, promotes consistency across institutions, aligns terminology with federal regulations (where appropriate), and supports student-facing communications while still allowing space for institutions to use their own branding and logos.
The CFLA applies to all institutions that participate in the State Grant program. These institutions must:
Use OHE's standardized financial aid offer form.
Use OHE's standard terminology and definitions in financial aid communications.
Apply the standard format to both official and unofficial financial aid offers.
Use the form for paper, electronic, and mobile-optimized communications.
Institutions will still be allowed to incorporate their own branding and logos, provided the standard format, ordering, and presentation of information are not altered.
The standardized offer letter will include core information students need to understand the cost of attendance and available aid. Required elements include:
Total direct costs, including tuition, fees, and any differential tuition, if applicable.
Total estimated cost of attendance, including housing, food, books, supplies, and personal expenses.
The academic period covered by the offer and enrollment assumptions (whether the cost and aid estimates are based off of full-time or part-time enrollment).
All grants and scholarships available to the student, itemized by source and type.
Net price that the student, or the student’s family, is estimated to have to pay for that academic period (including a disclosure that the net price is an estimate of total expenses for the year, not equivalent to the amount the student will owe directly to the institution).
Supplemental information for students with dependents (dependent care allowance and Minnesota childcare grant program).
Process for accepting or declining aid and next steps.
Institutions may also choose to provide additional information, such as:
Repayment resources,
Work-study opportunities,
Private loan information, and
Other supplemental details that may help students understand their options.
The legislation requires OHE to consult with a broad range of stakeholders during development which include the student loan advocate within the Minnesota Department of Commerce, student representatives, institutions of higher education, financial aid administrators and counselors, and high school counselors. The legislation also allows OHE to engage with any other stakeholder it deems relevant. OHE has already expanded engagement to include parents and families, college access organizations, and community partners and advocates.
According to OHE, stakeholder consultation began in August 2025 and continues through the development process. The agency has emphasized multiple opportunities for feedback and review before finalizing the forms and terminology. OHE has released updated terms and definitions based on stakeholder feedback as part of the development process.
Implementation of the standardized financial aid offer letter is occurring through a multi-phase process that began in August 2025. OHE expects each draft to undergo multiple rounds of review and revision before a final version is adopted. Key milestones include:
August 2025: Stakeholder consultation begins
Summer 2026: Continued stakeholder engagement and feedback
September 1, 2026: Draft forms and standard terminology available for feedback
Early 2027: Final forms and terminology released
2028–29 Academic Year: Required statewide implementation begins
As seen above, the draft form must be available for stakeholder feedback by September 1st, 2026. The final version must be available on the OHE website with enough time to be implemented for the 2028-2029 academic year.
Once implemented, OHE will maintain authority over the templates and terminology and may update them as needed to reflect changes in state or federal law. Institutions' compliance will be monitored through existing audit processes.
Additional information, lists of standard terms, and answers to frequently asked questions can all be found on OHE’s website at ohe.mn.gov/CFLA.
