Pursuant to the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law, Act 3 of 2008 (65 P.S. §67.101 et seq.) (also known as the Act), public records of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), also conducting operations as American Education Services, are generally available to legal residents of the United States for inspection or copying. The following outlines basic procedures for making a request for public records.

NOTE: Records related to an individual student or borrower's account (for example, promissory notes, loan histories, etc.) are not public records subject to the Act. Likewise, inquiries regarding the status of a student or borrower's grant or loan are not proper under the Act. Please direct all individual student and borrower inquiries to the appropriate departments within PHEAA. We will not respond to any request made under the Act for an individual student or borrower's account information, status update, or the like.

Request for Public Records

A request for public records may be either oral or in writing. If a requester wishes to pursue the rights and remedies afforded under the Act, however, then the request must be in writing.

A requester is defined as a person who is a legal resident of the United States or a government agency. As such, we will not accept or respond to requests from anonymous sources.

A requester may submit a written request in person, by mail, by fax, or by email. A requester may create an original written request, or may use the attached form, created by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. We accept Right-To-Know Law requests during regular business hours, Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM (ET). Requests delivered outside of regular business hours will be considered received on the next business day.

Standard Right-to-Know Request Form (PDF)

Submission Method	Details
By U.S. Mail:	PHEAA Nathan Hench, Right to Know Official 1200 North Seventh Street, Floor 6 Harrisburg, PA 17102-1444
By Fax:	Attention: Right-to-Know Official 717-720-3911
By Email:	rtk@pheaa.org

All written requests must include the date submitted, the location (city, township, etc.) of the requester, and a name and address to where the response and additional correspondence should be sent. The request should also indicate whether the requester seeks copies of the requested documents or wishes to simply review the documents at PHEAA.

A written request should identify or describe the records sought with sufficient specificity for us to ascertain which records are being requested. A written request need not include any explanation of the requester's reason for requesting or intended use of the records.

If a request is denied in part, in full, or deemed denied (meaning PHEAA failed to respond to the request within the time permitted) then the requester has the right to appeal. The appeal must be filed within 15 business days of the mailing date of PHEAA's response, or within 15 business days of the deemed denial. The appeal should be addressed to:

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Office of Open Records
333 Market Street, Floor 16
Harrisburg, PA 17101-2234

Fees

Standard Fees are outlined below.

Item	Fee
Photocopies (A photocopy is either a single-sided copy or one side of a double-sided black-and-white copy of a standard 8.5-by-11 inch page)	$0.25 per page
Certified records	$1.00 per page
Facsimile, microfilm, other media	actual cost
Specialized documents (examples include blueprints, color-copies, non-standard size documents)	actual cost
Postage fee	actual cost of mailing

PHEAA reserves the right to charge all additional fees as permitted by the Act. Prior to granting a request for access, PHEAA may require a requester to prepay an estimate of the fees authorized under this section if the fees required to fulfill the request are expected to exceed $100.

For additional information on Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know law, please visit openRecords.pa.gov.