Finding Text
Assistance Listing, Federal Agency, and Program Name - Student Financial Assistance Cluster - Federal Direct Student Loan Program ALN 84.268 and Federal Pell Grants ALN 84.063
Federal Award Identification Number and Year - Various
Finding Type - Significant deficiency and material noncompliance with laws and regulations
Repeat Finding - No
Criteria - Changes in a student’s status are required to be reported to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) within 30 days of the change or included in a student status confirmation report sent to the NSLDS within 60 days of the status change (Pell, 34 CFR Section 690.83(b); Direct Loan, 34 CFR Section 685.309(b)).
Condition - The College did not properly update student enrollment information for campus record and program record in a timely manner due to not correcting errors in the enrollment roster uploads identified and returned by NSLDS.
Questioned Costs - None
Identification of How Questioned Costs Were Computed - N/A
Context - There were three errors identified that were attributed to this finding:
1. Of the 40 students tested, there were 4 students who attended the College during fiscal year 2023 that transferred out but were never reported as attending the College on the campus and program record.
2. Of the 40 students tested, there were 2 students that started attending the College in the Fall of 2021 and Fall of 2022 that were not reported as attending the College in the correct year. Both students were reported as not enrolling until the Fall of 2023 on the campus and program record.
3. Of the 40 students tested, there was 1 student that started attending the College in the Fall of 2022 that was not reported as enrolled on the campus and program record until April 2024.
All seven students showed on the error reports from NSLDS enrollment roster uploads as "NO SSN".
Cause and Effect - The College did not have a control in place to ensure that errors reports returned from NSLDS were corrected. As a result, certain student status changes including first time enrollment and transfers were not reported to NSLDS in a timely and accurate manner.
Recommendation - The College should implement a process between the Financial Aid Department and Registrar's Office to ensure enrollment information, including error reports from enrollment roster uploads to NSLDS, are updated timely and accurately.
Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions - The Registrar’s office in conjunction with the Financial Aid office will implement controls to ensure accurate and timely reporting to NSLDS for student enrollment status. The current cause of the untimely reporting is due to students missing social security numbers with our database which does not allow them to match to existing student in NSLDS. A report is being created through Argos (reporting software) that will be run on a monthly basis to be sure all students have the proper information needed for enrollment reporting. This report is being created through the registrar’s office and will work in conjunction with financial aid to get these records updated according with the accurate SS# for the students. Enrollment reporting is done through National Student Clearinghouse which returns error reports for a multitude of different reason one being SS#. The Assistant Registrar handles all enrollment reporting on a monthly basis. After each monthly submission the Registrar will be cross referencing the error reports to be sure that all necessary errors have been corrected and cleared. The Assistant Registrar will also be doing an analysis on the Argos report that pulls all data for the enrollment reporting submission to be sure that all data fields are still correct due to system changes on a consistent basis.