FINDING 2022-001 Contact Person Responsible for Corrective Action: Colby Shank Contact Phone Number: 317-921-4765 Views of Responsible Official: Ivy Tech Community College disputes this audit finding. The College has an effective internal control system to ensure compliance with requirements relate...
FINDING 2022-001 Contact Person Responsible for Corrective Action: Colby Shank Contact Phone Number: 317-921-4765 Views of Responsible Official: Ivy Tech Community College disputes this audit finding. The College has an effective internal control system to ensure compliance with requirements related to the Special Tests and Provisions ? Return of Title IV Funds compliance requirement. The College previously determined that the Return of Title IV Funds (R2T4) is high-risk due to the large number of transactions, the College?s modular term-based system, and the manual nature of R2T4 calculations. Therefore, a robust quality control review process was implemented. College personnel regularly monitor the error rates and nature of errors discovered through the quality control review to identify, correct, and eliminate calculation errors. The claimed errors outlined in Finding 2022-001 relate to the interpretation of how a correction recalculation is determined. In correction calculations, aid previously returned as a result of the initial calculation in the 2021-2022 academic year was considered no longer disbursed and was included in the correction calculation as ?aid that could have been disbursed.? In certain scenarios, this can result in different return amounts than if the aid had been included in the calculation as ?aid disbursed.? In the absence of explicit guidance on how to handle these scenarios within the Federal Student Aid Handbook, College interpretation and precedent has been to treat aid previously returned under the original calculation as aid that could have been disbursed. Volume 5, Chapter 2 of the 2021-2022 Federal Student Aid Handbook states that ?any undisbursed Title IV aid for the period that the school uses as the basis for the R2T4 calculation is counted as aid that could have been disbursed.? Ivy Tech confirmed this interpretation as valid via a third-party financial aid expert who facilitated a discussion with a representative of the USDOE. This USDOE representative confirmed the accuracy of the calculation and the alignment with the Federal Student Aid Policy Implementation and Oversight Directorate. During this discussion, the representative stated that the results of the original calculation could not be ignored, and that including aid that is no longer disbursed as ?aid that could have been disbursed? is the proper way to perform a correction calculation. The auditors state the College should have performed the following actions: ?The College should have considered the original amount of aid to be returned that had already been posted to each student?s account. The College should have posted the additional amount of aid to be returned to the students? accounts based upon the net difference between the original calculation and the corrective calculation performed for each student.? This methodology would have produced inaccurate return amounts under the interpretation of guidance from Federal Student Aid from which the College was operating during the review period. Only posting the ?net difference? between the original calculation and the correction calculation would have resulted in too few funds being returned to Federal Student Aid for many calculations during the review period. Specifically, a difference in return amounts occurred when the amount of unearned charges (institutional charges for the period multiplied by the percentage of unearned Title IV aid) was less than the calculated amount of Title IV aid to be returned. Under the R2T4 calculation formula, the amount of unearned charges can effectively create a ?cap? on the amount of Title IV aid to be returned by the school. At Ivy Tech Community College, this cap is most often reached when students receive disbursements of federal student loans prior to withdrawing. Because a relatively small percentage of Ivy Tech students receive federal student loans, most correction calculations performed during the review period by Ivy Tech under our interpretation of the guidance resulted in accurate return amounts. This issue only impacted a subset of students who received a correction calculation during the review period. Description of Corrective Action Plan: Upon receiving new guidance from the Chicago/Denver regional office of Federal Student Aid, Ivy Tech has modified the way in which it performs R2T4 correction calculations. Aid returned as a result of the original calculation will remain in the correction calculation as ?aid disbursed? instead of ?aid that could have been disbursed.? The College is no longer following prior guidance received by an expert consultant, a representative of Federal Student Aid that advised the College to include aid that has already been returned as ?aid that could have been disbursed.? The calculation change will be monitored for correctness through the College?s previously established internal controls and quality assurance process for the R2T4 process. Financial aid staff have been trained on the calculation change. Ivy Tech will review all students during the review period who received a correction calculation and will cover with institutional aid any federal grant aid that otherwise would not have been returned under the new guidance from Federal Student Aid. Anticipated Completion Date: 3/31/2023