Finding Text
Finding 2025-001 Federal Program Information: Student Financial Aid Cluster (ALN: Various) Criteria or Specific Requirement: E. Eligibility - Cost of Attendance - For Title IV programs, the cost of attendance is generally the sum of the following: tuition and fees; an allowance for books, course materials, supplies, equipment, transportation, and miscellaneous personal expenses; an allowance for food and housing; when applicable, allowances for costs for dependent care; cost of obtaining a license, certification, or a first professional credential; costs associated with study abroad and cooperative education; costs related to disabilities; and fees charged for Federal student loans (34 CFR 668.43). Condition: For 5 students selected for testing, the student’s estimated cost of attendance was not properly calculated. Cause: Administrative oversight. Effect or Possible Effect: The College was not in compliance with requirements for calculating cost of attendance. Questioned Costs: $0 Context: 5 out of 25 students selected for testing. Identification of Repeat Finding: There were no similar findings identified during the prior year. Recommendation: We recommend the College enhance its procedures over cost of attendance to ensure it is calculated correctly. Views of Responsible Officials: Management agrees with the finding that the estimated Cost of Attendance (COA) for the summer term was calculated incorrectly for five students. Because the summer term includes multiple sessions, the COA multi-step programming process in PowerFAIDS, the College’s financial aid management software, including the review of COA selection metrics, are manual. In April 2025, the College migrated its ERP software and PowerFAIDS to cloud-based platforms. This transaction required significant time from Office of Financial Aid (OFA) staff to test system functionality and validate migrated data to ensure a smooth go-live. As these efforts coincided with summer COA programming, the capacity for thorough review and comprehensive functional testing of summer COA setup was reduced. Going forward, the OFA will assign a staff member, separate from the individual handling COA programming, to review the COA selection metrics. In addition, the OFA will evaluate the potential of automating COA programming processes.