If you have been notified by the Office of Financial Aid that you are not meeting SAP standards, you may submit an appeal to be considered for financial aid probation. The deadline for Fall 2020 SAP appeals is this Friday, 7 August 2020. 

Your appeal must describe the circumstance(s) that impacted your ability to meet SAP standards as well as outline your plans and ability to succeed in future semesters and bring yourself within standards. Appeal circumstances may include injury or illness, death of a relative, caring for ill relatives, or other special circumstances that impacted your academic success.  If you choose to submit an appeal, complete both the Appeal and the Academic Plan. Full details about the appeal process can be found here: https://financialaid.umbc.edu/sap/appeals/

Appeals will be submitted electronically using DocuSign. Please note that the appeal is split into two parts, the SAP Appeal eform and the SAP Academic Plan eform.

By David Salkever, professor emeritus of Public Policy, UMBC

Americans who lost their jobs because of the pandemic had been getting a US$600 bump on top of state benefits in their weekly unemployment checks since March. That ended on July 31, and lawmakers are debating whether to extend the program and if so by how much.

Senate Republicans are arguing it’s too generous to the 18 million who are unemployed and serves as a disincentive to returning to work. Their initial proposal in the ongoing negotiations would slash the benefit to $200 a week.

As an empirical economist, I wanted to see if their concerns about the disincentive were valid. So I analyzed data on earnings and unemployment benefits to estimate the share of benefit-eligible workers who could collect more on the dole than on the job.

Replacement wages

I started my analysis by looking at 2019 Current Population Survey data to estimate weekly earnings of private-sector employees, both nationally and state by state. I then adjusted the numbers for wage inflation and compared the results with jobless benefits and “replacement wages,” which vary from state to state.

Iowa is the most generous and replaces 49% of a worker’s weekly wages with a cash benefit when he or she loses a job involuntarily, while Alaska is the stingiest and replaces only 28% of income. I estimated that on average the replacement rate for all workers in the U.S. was about a third.

Once the $600 federal supplement is added in, the national average wage replacement rate soars to 127%. On an individual basis, I found that 56% of eligible workers would receive more in benefits than they would earn gainfully employed. Among those workers, the average excess benefit was $253.

This figure also varies in each state, depending on replacement rates as well as average weekly earnings. For example, benefits exceed their earnings for little more than a third of workers in Washington, D.C., while that figure is 75% in New Mexico.

If Congress passes a lower federal supplement of $200, the result would drastically change the picture. As a result, I estimate only 9.5% of workers across the country would receive more in benefits than what they could earn – on average about $61 – and the replacement rate would drop by half to about 65%.

The Republican plan would eventually have the $200 supplement replaced with a system that provides workers with a combined state and federal benefit equal to a replacement rate of 70%. The federal share would be capped at $500.

Why $600 is still important

While Republicans are right that the $600 jobless benefit may seem high, that alone does not mean it should be cut.

The unemployment insurance program started in 1935 soon after the Great Depression ended with two major objectives: to provide temporary partial wage replacement to unemployed workers and to help stimulate the economy during recessions.

The second objective is important. With the U.S. economy sinking into recession, a more generous supplement acts as a powerful stimulus. Consumer spending makes up more than 70% of the economy, and most of those who receive the benefit will spend it quickly. This powerful and ongoing jolt would help revive the economy – or at least keep it alive – as well as offset worries that economic inequality will soar as a result of the pandemic.

In addition, unemployment insurance only replaces wages. A job often comes with other benefits, such as health insurance and retirement plans. Even full-time service workers in the private sector, who as a group earn less than $15 per hour in wages, receive an average of $1.99 per hour in employer-paid insurance, mostly for health care.

Overall, non-cash job benefits amount on average to 19% of total employee pay. Factoring in that non-cash dollar value reduces the average replacement rate to 108% and lowers the share of employees receiving excess benefits from 56% to 43%.

Finally, employment insurance works in a way that limits its ability to act as a disincentive to work. People who quit their jobs voluntarily are ineligible for benefits. And someone without a job who receives a suitable offer of employment is no longer eligible to continue receiving benefits. That’s one explanation cited in a recent study by Yale economists that found no evidence that the $600 federal supplement reduced employment.

Altogether, I find Republican concerns that the $600 supplement dissuades work unpersuasive in the context of the current pandemic. A generous policy that helps support the economy and aids those at risk of losing their homes or struggling to feed their families seems more sensible than one that assumes someone collecting unemployment benefits could just as easily be working.

*****

David Salkever, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Header image: The $600 federal jobless benefit expired on July 31. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

DoIT has been made aware of a problem with the dial-in feature in Webex Meetings. The symptom is that when joining a meeting through the phone that users will receive an error of “You have dialed a call in number that is not supported for this meeting”.


Our vendor, Cisco, is working on the problem now. As a work around, you may use the join audio by computer function which appears to be unaffected by the problem.

Updates will be posted as the problem is resolved. 

Ray Soellner

DoIT - UMBC

rays1@umbc.edu

410-455-3256

Graduating seniors are required to turn in a short portfolio of their work over the course of the major.  In lieu of a capstone experience, students who intend to graduate with a major in Asian Studies are required to complete a small portfolio prior to graduation. The portfolio is due to Dr. Meredith Oyen by November 25, 2020 and should contain the following items:

• (1) Electronic copies of three assignments for two or more courses in Asian Studies—preferably from three different years in the program (these can be long or short assignments, including work for language classes, and they can be scans of originals, with teacher feedback)

• (2) A brief reflection (2-3 pp) on your study abroad experience(s), if you were able to study in Asia

• (3) A resume

• (4) A brief description (2-3 pp) of how you see Asian Studies impacting your career or graduate school plans, focusing on roughly a 5-year time frame

Please assemble all items in the portfolio into a single .pdf, .doc, or .docx file beginning with a table of contents (list of items included in the file).  Submit via email to Dr. Meredith Oyen, Director, Asian Studies Program (oyen@umbc.edu).  Dr. Oyen is also happy to meet with you or answer emailed questions about the requirement.   

In June 2020,  Dave, a digital banking app, suffered a data breach. 7.5 million rows of data were leaked to the public on a hacking forum. The breach exposed individuals’ Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as names, dates of birth, encrypted social security numbers and passwords.

UMBC’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has been notified that over 20 UMBC accounts might have been affected by this breach. 

The individuals who have been affected by the data breach were notified via their UMBC email and/or their alternate emails. If you do not have an alternate email listed on your UMBC account, we suggest that you create one, preferably different from your UMBC email account. 

To link an alternate email account to your UMBC account follow the instructions below:

1. Login to your myUMBC account: http://my.umbc.edu/account

2. Go to https://webadmin.umbc.edu/admin//Security/Setup/View

3. Click Account security setup

4. At the top of the page, enter your alternate email address

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Update my security settings

If you have a Dave account we suggest that you contact them to see if your information has been leaked. 

The data about Dave was provided to the breach notification service Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) by dehashed.com.

For more information on Dave data breach visit:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-unicorn-dave-admits-to-security-breach-impacting-7-5-million-users/

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/dave-data-breach 

If you have any questions or concerns email us: security@umbc.edu 

_________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Today, we’re continuing our audio meditation series, “Nature as Teacher,” with our second meditation, “Creating a Space of Nonjudgment.” This meditation focuses on acknowledging our tendency to quickly react to situations, rather than manifesting understanding or acceptance, so that we can learn to let go of expectation and judgment. 

Each meditation is kindly presented by UMBC’s Director of Workplace Learning, OD & Wellness and Founder & CEO of Wardell Development Group LLC., Jill Wardell and supported by the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership with a generous gift from Nature Sacred (https://naturesacred.org/).

Check out the meditation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_wi359PxUQ&t=3s

Website: https://cadvc.umbc.edu/nature/