Finding Text
U.S. Department of Education Student Financial Aid Cluster:
ALN: 84.063 Pell Grant
ALN: 84.007 Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant
ALN 84.033 Federal Work Study
ALN 84.038 Federal Perkins Loan Program
ALN 84.268 Federal Direct Student Loans
Criteria: Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans have annual loan limits that vary based on the student's grade level and dependency status (34 CFR 685.203). The annual loan limit is the maximum amount that a student may receive for an academic year. Under 34 CFR 685.203(d) and (e), the aggregate loan limits are listed for Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans (a borrower's maximum allowable outstanding loan debt, excluding capitalized interest, but including amounts borrowed under the Federal Family Education Loan program prior to 2010).
Condition: There were four students who exceeded their subsidized loan limits during the audit period.
Context: Reports generated from Banner indicated that only four students exceeded this limit for the audit period.
Effect: Noncompliance with the federal regulations on loan limits.
Questioned Costs: None.
Cause: These students were enrolled and attended spring, summer, and fall programs. When the fall amounts were awarded, the summer award had not yet been processed, so there was no overage at the time of the fall award. Once the summer was processed, the students exceeded the loan limit. This error was not caught or corrected during the audit period.
Auditor Recommendation: We recommend the University implement internal control procedures to prevent this overage from occurring in future years.
University Response: The four students who exceeded their loan limits were Accelerated Nursing Students. The loan offers were made and disbursed for Fall 2024 prior to receiving updated information from the summer disbursements. This is due to a delay in the information that NSLDS provides, resulting in an overpayment. The new ISIR records were not found until this audit period.
Of the four students, one was corrected with the Subsidized Loan reallocated to an Unsubsidized Loan. The amount of the reallocation is $656. Of the remaining three students:
• Two could not be reallocated because they had already done consolidations
• One did not have an unsubsidized loan to reallocate to.
In the future, students subject to this timing issue will be monitored closely for Subsidized Loan usage in the first two semesters as it relates to their full eligibility. Since this will always be a timing issue, the financial aid office will leverage all available tools to prevent recurrence and ensure subsidized loans are not over awarded in future years.
Jenzabar, our new Student Information System, has reporting tools available for our office to use, and we will utilize these reports to closely follow the students in the ABSN program.