2024-004
Cluster: Student Financial Assistance
Sponsoring Agency: Department of Education
Award Name: Pell Grant Program and Federal Direct Student Loans
Award Number: Various
Assistance Listing Title: Federal Pell Grant Program and Federal Direct Student Loans
Assistance Listing Numbers: 84.033 and...
2024-004
Cluster: Student Financial Assistance
Sponsoring Agency: Department of Education
Award Name: Pell Grant Program and Federal Direct Student Loans
Award Number: Various
Assistance Listing Title: Federal Pell Grant Program and Federal Direct Student Loans
Assistance Listing Numbers: 84.033 and 84.268
Award Year: 2023-2024
Pass-through entity: Not applicable
Campus One
The Winter 2024 Start of Term Enrollment report was delayed due to technical difficulties, which prevented timely reporting of Fall 2023 graduates as withdrawn before their subsequent graduation status could be recorded. Corrective action will be for coordination to occur between Information Technology Solutions (ITS) and the Registrar’s Office when a delay such as this is unavoidable to 1) ensure resolution is a top priority and 2) manual updates are completed if required. We will maintain enhanced communication between Information Technology Solutions (ITS) and the Registrar’s Office when data files are not sent by intended deadlines. Meetings will occur to determine cause, timing for resolution and potential impact to reporting timelines. It will be determined what escalations need to occur for resolution and if manual data entry is required, and if so for which populations. Increased communication practices and timeline discussions have been implemented as of March 15, 2025.
We will evaluate the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) Enrollment Reporting requirements to determine if we are prescribed to a specific date logic or if the date is determined by campus procedure. Once we know what date is expected for reporting effective dates then we need to determine how the reporting needs to change. We will investigate the data flow from Banner, to NSC to NSLDS to determine at what point the effective dates between the Campus level information and the Program level information are being stored differently. Additionally, we will review NSLDS Enrolment Reporting to document expected data points/definitions in data output from Banner and reporting within National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) and NSLDS.
Data will need to be evaluated at each stage to determine where the misalignment occurs. This will start with evaluating the output from the Ellucian delivered NSC enrollment and degree files. If the error is determined to be at this stage, the campus will engage with Ellucian to determine how to correct the error. If the error is not at this stage, the next stage is to evaluate NSC’s retrieval and storage of our data file in their database. If the error is determined to be at this stage, the campus will engage with NSC to determine how to correct the error. Although it is not believed that the error is with NSLDS, that will be the last evaluation to ensure the data is accurately represented throughout the full data sharing process.
Both the evaluation of reporting requirements and the data flow analysis described above will be completed by June 30, 2025.
For inquiries regarding this finding, please contact Bracken Dailey at bracken.dailey@ucr.edu.
Campus Two
The cause and remediation plan for the two exceptions noted are as follows:
1) It has been identified that a summer graduate was not reported as Withdrawn or Graduated status within 60 days due to the timing of the fall reporting to NSC and when they reported the student’s status to NSLDS. Currently, we don’t begin fall reporting until a few weeks after the start of fall term and it missed the date of when NSC reported the status to NSLDS until after the next submission. Thus, only the Graduated status was submitted to NSLDS. Additionally, the Graduated status for summer term is not available until late October since it takes 6 weeks to finalize degrees once grades are submitted. Summer is not a required term. The summer term begins in June and ends in September with many different end dates available for student instruction.
To rectify the issue, we will start fall reporting earlier by scheduling the first submission on the first day of fall term for the upcoming academic year. Starting the fall reporting earlier will likely result in a higher number of errors for Registrar staff to manually correct as there will be more students who will not be enrolled for fall by that time. However, this will capture a Withdrawn status for the students who have completed summer coursework (ending in early August) within the 60 days of their last status. The submission schedule is an automated process. We changed the business rule in our production scheduling on March 10, 2025.
Our enrollment reporting schedule for academic year 2025-2026 will be finalized in NSC’s online application by August 1, 2025, such that the new, additional First of Term enrollment file for Fall will execute on the first day of the quarter, Monday, September 22, 2025.
2) It has been identified that a Medicine student’s Leave of Absence (LOA) status was not reported within 60 days. We use two branches to report Medicine students in NSC: students in their first three years of the program are reported under branch 82 and students in their final/fourth year are reported under branch 81. Typically, the NSLDS Roster process sends NSLDS only the most currently certified record for each student on the Rosters at the time the Roster is received by NSC. However, if a student is reported in two or more branches at the same time and both active statuses, NSC’s system uses a hierarchy that sends NSLDS the higher status.
This student was entering their final year and was actively enrolled in two different branches at the same time. In branch 82, the student was reported as Full-Time via an online update certified on 8/23/2023. Concurrently, the student was reported under branch 81 as LOA certified on 8/14/2023 and 9/5/2023. When NSC received the 9/1/2023 Roster, the latest certified record of Full-Time status was sent to NSLDS. By the time the 9/19/2023 Roster was received, the LOA status had a later certification date but since the student was still Full-Time status in branch 82 and the Full-Time status is a higher status than LOA, NSC’s system sent NSLDS the Full-Time status on the 9/19/2023 Roster. It wasn’t until 9/23/2023 that the student was reported as Withdrawn from branch 82. At that point, the higher status was LOA and was sent to NSLDS on 10/2/2024.
To prevent this issue from occurring in the future, we will create a report that captures Medicine students whose status changes from spring to summer terms. The report will generate every time there’s a change in status between the last day of spring and the first day of summer. Registrar staff will manually update the information in NSC for those students in the previous branch before they move into the next branch. Then when the regular enrollment reporting occurs for Medicine summer term, NSLDS will receive and process the changed status.
This report will be implemented by June 1, 2025. Spring semester 3rd year Medicine ends on June 13, 2025. Summer term for ending 3rd/advancing 4th year Medicine begins on June 16, 2025. Students whose spring status changes to a lesser status for summer will be identified and manually updated directly with NSC, such that students under branch 82 (years 1-3) would be reported timely to NSLDS.
For inquiries regarding this finding, please contact Kate Jakway Kelly at kjakway@registrar.ucla.edu.
"Campus Three
For enrollment reporting, we will request a dedicated analyst at the National Student Clearinghouse to minimize enrollment reporting errors. We have two campuses we report on: Main Campus and Medical. The timing of the reports is crucial to NSC accepting the enrollment records. The Office of the Registrar is working with the NSC to request a dedicated analyst be assigned to us, as we have had historically. Effective February 2025, we implemented our plan to manually check the students on the error report to verify when status changes need to be applied to both the campus and program level. This will ensure that updates make it to the campus enrollment level, when applicable, and are not missed as was happening previously.
We will continue our communications with the NSC to implement a long-term solution by having a dedicated analyst to reduce the potential of an error like this from happening again and ensure updates are processed accordingly. The Office of the Registrar will work with Financial Aid monthly to spot check student records to ensure that NSLDS is subsequently receiving the enrollment data. The Office of the Registrar will provide 5 PIDs from every degree file and have a 45-day check in place. If the Financial Aid team does not see a “G” in NSLDS 45 days from the date of determination, the Registrar will follow up with NSC.
In response to the graduation date, the Registrar and Financial Aid Offices on main campus and Health Sciences are working with the School of Pharmacy to review current practices and address the program conferral date issue which led to the finding. Correcting our process and updating our schedule will ensure our reporting to the National Student Clearinghouse and NSLDS is in compliance with the 60-day reporting requirement.
The offices will meet to develop a 5-year plan aligning the graduation conferral date with the last date of the term in the Student Information System. This update to the conferral date will ensure the status change will be included in the Registrar’s regular enrollment reporting schedule, i.e., 15th of each month. The NSC reporting team in the office of the Registrar will work closely with the School of Pharmacy to ensure graduation date is timely in the system and reported correctly with the clearinghouse.
To ensure the adjustment to the reporting schedule meets the required timeline, the Registrar’s team will conduct a review of the NSC report to ensure a sample of the Pharmacy graduates are included each year. In turn, the Health Sciences financial aid team will conduct a review of NSLDS to ensure a sample of these students had their enrollment status updated accordingly. A potential challenge may be the aligning of the dates with the monthly reporting schedule should they fall on a non-business day.
The offices held their first meeting on March 10, 2025, to discuss the enrollment reporting issue as well as the needs of the School of Pharmacy as it relates to licensure for students. A solution was presented to the School of Pharmacy for the Spring 2025 graduating class. A follow-up meeting is scheduled March 24, 2025, to develop a calendar, along with the responsibilities for the Registrar and the School of Pharmacy teams in order to ensure compliance and mitigate risk. This plan will be in place no later than July 1, 2025, so it is in place for full FY26.
For inquiries regarding this finding, please contact Cindy Lyons at cglyons@ucsd.edu.
Campus Four
We will establish a more structured and timely reporting process for submitting enrollment status changes to NSLDS, with additional tracking and reminders to ensure compliance. We will review and revise procedures to ensure consistent and accurate alignment of status change dates at both the program and campus levels, with additional staff training. Through collaboration with our third-party servicer, we will address the data error issue, ensuring any discrepancies are promptly identified and resolved. We will implement a more proactive approach to follow up on discrepancies, ensuring that all identified errors are appropriately addressed, even if they are not required for immediate submission. Regular staff training on NSLDS reporting and error resolution will be conducted, along with periodic internal audits to ensure continued compliance and accuracy.
Actions already taken to address this finding include consultation with the analyst at NSC regarding the findings, with the analyst looking for these specific findings in addition to the standard errors reported by their system. After the initial data load, they notify the Office of the Registrar staff of any data errors related to these findings and a corrected enrollment file is submitted prior to the file being finalized. The process change appears to be effective in correcting the findings but will require additional assessment to verify that the changes with NSC persist to NSLDS.
Implementation of the ad hoc process based on NSC's error reporting is already in place. Review and Assessment of our approach to enrollment reporting should be completed by June 30, 2025, with development, implementation, and training of new processes completed by August 31, 2025.
For inquiries regarding this finding, please contact Anthony Schmid at anthony.schmid@sa.ucsb.edu."