Finding Text
U.S. Department of Education
Student Financial Assistance Cluster
Federal Financial Assistance Listing Number(s): 84.007, 84.033, 84.063, 84.268
Compliance Requirement(s): Special Tests and Provisions – Enrollment Reporting
Significant Deficiency in Internal Control
Criteria: 34 CFR 690.83(b)(2) and 34 CFR 685.309 states that Institutions are responsible for timely and accurate reporting of a student’s enrollment status and changes in those enrollment statuses, whether they report directly or via a third-party servicer. When an Institution is made aware of a change in a student’s enrollment status, the Institution has 60 days to update the change in enrollment status via NSLDS.
Condition: During our testing of compliance for Enrollment Reporting, there was 1 instance out of 60 where the College did not report a student’s change in enrollment status accurately or within the required time frame of 60 days from the effective date of the student’s change in enrollment status. In addition, evidence of the review of this submission was not retained.
Cause: Enrollment Services did not catch that a student who was auditing a course should have been marked as withdrawn for reporting purposes to NSLDS.
Effect: The student’s change in enrollment status was not accurately reported in NSLDS and/or was not reported timely.
Questioned Costs: None reported.
Context/Sampling: A nonstatistical sample of 60 participants out of 721 students who had a change in enrollment status were selected for testing.
Repeat Finding from Prior Year(s): No
Recommendation: The Enrollment Services Office should review their current practices and controls over reporting changes in student’s enrollment statuses to ensure any change to a student’s enrollment status is reported both accurately and timely to NSLDS.
Views of Responsible Officials: Management agrees with the finding. The Registrar’s Office will review clearing house batch errors reports and any students that go from enrolled in a course to auditing a course. In addition, the Registrar’s Office will conduct and retain evidence of quality sampling once a semester.