Finding Text
Federal Program:
U.S. Department of Education
Federal Direct Loan Program, CFDA 84.268
Criteria:
The University must comply with 34 CFR Section 685.309(b).
Condition:
During our testing of 40 graduates, we noted four students for which the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) was not notified timely of the correct student status change. The University submitted graduates through rosters sent to the National Student Clearinghouse (the Clearinghouse), but ultimately were not reported timely to the NSLDS.
Cause:
The University did not have controls in place to ensure students' classification was being reported to the NSLDS timely after submitting rosters to the Clearinghouse.
Effect:
The provisions of 34 CFR Section 685.309(b) were not followed and thus a total of four students had untimely status changes reported to the NSLDS.
Questioned Costs:
There were no questioned costs associated with this finding.
Recommendation:
We recommend that the University implement controls to ensure students are timely reported to the NSLDS after roster files are submitted to the Clearinghouse.
Views of responsible officials and planned corrective actions:
Management acknowledges this finding and will change the procedure to verify enrollment status changes to ensure that there are no issues of files not transferring from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS). Currently, the Financial Aid Director confirms status changes in NSLDS at day 50, and as part of the process change a second status check will occur with a separate Financial Aid staff member before the 60 day timeframe has passed to ensure that no students were missed in the file transfer or that status changes occurred after the initial check.