Finding Text
U.S. Department of Education
Student Financial Assistance Cluster
Federal Financial Assistance Listing Number(s): 84.063, 84.007, 84.268, 84.033, 84.038, 84.379 Compliance Requirement: Special Tests & Provisions – Enrollment Reporting
Type of Finding: Material Weakness 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 were 16 instances out of 21 where NLSDS did not reflect accurate or timely reporting of a student's change in enrollment status. While records were submitted accurately and timely to the Clearinghouse, those records were not reflected in NSLDS.
Cause: The University pushed through the changes in enrollment status to the Clearinghouse timely and accurately based upon the student’s enrollment status; however, the change in enrollment status was not pushed through all the way to NSLDS resulting in inaccurate and untimely records within 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 21 participants out of 111 students who had a change in enrollment status were selected for testing.
Repeat Finding from Prior Year(s): No
Recommendation: The University should implement controls to ensure that enrollment records for students are being updated every 60 days, and that those records being submitted to NSLDS are accurate.
Views of Responsible Officials: Management agrees with the finding.