2022-002 Significant Deficiency: National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) Report (U.S. Department of Education, William D. Ford Direct Loan Program, ALN #84.268 and Federal Pell Grant Program, ALN #84.063) ?Did not supply status updates to NSLDS in a timely manner. Name of Contact Person: The Direc...
2022-002 Significant Deficiency: National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) Report (U.S. Department of Education, William D. Ford Direct Loan Program, ALN #84.268 and Federal Pell Grant Program, ALN #84.063) ?Did not supply status updates to NSLDS in a timely manner. Name of Contact Person: The Director of Registration and Records, Whitney Cleland, and the Director of Institutional Research and Assessment, Jason Thead, are responsible for the corrective action plan for this finding. Corrective Action Plan: King University uses the National Student Clearinghouse to report enrollment changes to NSLDS. Effective Fall 2022, King University will submit enrollment data uploads to the National Student Clearinghouse at least every 30 days. The first of term submission will occur within 21 days of the start date of the term. Monthly enrollment reporting will correspond with module drop/add periods and will occur no later than 10 business days after a module drop period ends, per the Academic Calendar. Additionally, and as a part of the enrollment submission process for the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), which provides data to NSLDS, an exception report is generated for each enrollment file prior to submission. This exception report is verified and remedied before data is submitted to NSC. Once data is submitted to NSC, an error report is generated from the NSC system. For any students who have status or level changes, the Director of Institutional Research and Assessment verifies all dates with an internal report, called the Enrollment Analysis by Course report, to ensure dates are accurately reported to the NSC. This report is also used by the Office of Financial Aid to ensure withdrawal dates are consistent. This internal report and process ensures that the dates used for all offices are the same, which remedies any communication issues between offices. Additionally, notices are sent by Financial Aid for adjustments to withdrawal dates, which are corrected in our database management system (DBMS). These additional steps allow the DBMS to accurately and collectively capture all applicable students, and the exception and error reports allow the institution to ensure the correct information is reported. We believe a portion of the untimely reporting to NSLDS is a result of the reporting delays between the National Student Clearinghouse and NSLDS, as documented in GENERAL-22-64 beginning July 25, 2022. The Dear Colleague letter and subsequent updates describe issues with enrollment functionality, which affected enrollment reporting. King conducted a review on a sample of students and found that students were reported correctly to the Clearinghouse but were not appearing in NSLDS. A more frequent enrollment schedule should remedy this issue. We also attribute these delays to changes in leadership/staffing during that timeframe. The enrollment reporting steps were outlined by the prior Registrar when this process transitioned to the Office of Institutional Research, but this staffing transition could have resulted in inaccurate data being captured and reported during a window of time in Fall 2021 (when the reporting responsibility transitioned). Additionally, it was discovered that incorrect coding in the CAMS database management system (DBMS) was causing exclusions based on a missing field. These exclusions began in Summer 2021 due to added majors that were not correctly created. Anticipated Completion Date Per above, effective Fall 2022, enrollment data is now uploaded to the National Student Clearinghouse at least every 30 days. Furthermore, the missing fields in the DBMS have been remedied, and the institution is working with NSC and NSLDS to correct previously misreported records by February 2023.