2023-001: Student Eligibility and Awarding
Recommendation: We recommend the District to evaluate its procedures related to the manual input of information from the student loan request.
Action taken in response to finding: This issue was the result of using the Solano completed unit level, rather th...
2023-001: Student Eligibility and Awarding
Recommendation: We recommend the District to evaluate its procedures related to the manual input of information from the student loan request.
Action taken in response to finding: This issue was the result of using the Solano completed unit level, rather than the cumulative number that includes transfer units, when awarding a student in our small BS Biotechnology program. Student had completed 43.5 credits at Solano by the beginning of the aid year. As a result, the student was awarded a second-year subsidized amount when they were eligible for the third year and beyond amount. This resulted in the student receiving $1,000 less subsidized loans than they were eligible for.
In July 2023, we trained the team to watch for this issue and evaluated the procedure log that we use for processing Direct Loans. This log now includes two checks that are relevant to ensuring subsidized loan amounts are correct:
1. Confirm the level of the student. If the student is in our BS Biotechnology program, they may have additional eligibility than the standard first-year and second-year loans that we normally process as a community college.
2. If the loan is a single-term loan, is the full subsidized eligibility exhausted before awarding any unsubsidized loan amounts?
The student’s file was corrected on COD on 8/3/2023 to reflect a $5,500 subsidized award.
Names of the contact persons responsible for corrective action: Patrick Scott, Dean – Financial Aid, and Kate Larot, Financial Aid Specialist
Planned completion date for corrective action plan: August 2023