Finding Text
Finding 2025-003 Federal Program Information: Student Financial Aid Cluster (ALN: Various) Criteria or Specific Requirement: N. Special Tests and Provisions – Enrollment Reporting – Institutions are required to report enrollment information under the Pell grant and the Direct and Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) loan programs via the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) (OMB No. 1845-0035). Although FFEL loans are no longer made or a part of the Student Financial Assistance Cluster, a student may have a FFEL loan from previous years that would require enrollment reporting for that student (Pell, 34 CFR 690.83(b)(2); FFEL, 34 CFR 682.610; Direct Loan, 34 CFR 685.309; Perkins 34 CFR 674.19(f)). Institutions must review, update, and verify student enrollment statuses, program information, and effective dates that appear on the Enrollment Reporting Roster file or on the Enrollment Maintenance page of the NSLDS Professional Access (NSLDSFAP) website. The data on the institution’s Enrollment Reporting Roster, or Enrollment Maintenance page, is what NSLDS has as the most recently certified enrollment information. There are two categories of enrollment information, “Campus Level” and “Program Level,” each with separate record types requiring accurate reporting. The NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Guide provides the requirements and guidance for reporting enrollment details using the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Process. Condition: For 1 student selected for testing, certain key elements at the Program-Level were not correctly reported to the NSLDS. Cause: Administrative oversight. Effect or Possible Effect: The College was not in compliance with the requirements of Program-Level enrollment reporting. Questioned Costs: $0 Context: 1 out of 25 students selected for testing. Identification of Repeat Finding: There was no similar finding identified during the prior year. Recommendation: We recommend the College enhance its procedures over enrollment reporting to ensure students’ enrollment statuses are accurately reported to NSLDS. Views of Responsible Officials: Management agrees with the finding that one student’s Program Begin Date was incorrectly reported to NSLDS. For this new student, the Program Begin Date was reported as 5/14/2021, the date the new student transitioned from admissions to registration, rather than the actual first day of the academic term in which the student began enrollment in the program, as required by Part 5 of the 2025 Compliance Supplement. Beginning with the 2020 OMB Compliance Supplement, enrollment reporting requirements were expanded to include additional compliance data elements for NSLDS. During the 2020-2021 award year, the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), the College’s third-party servicer for enrollment reporting, encountered program level data integrity issues. In response, new warning codes were introduced in December 2021, including WC 1811 Series, which addresses mismatch flags in Program Begin Date. In this case, however, no warning flag was triggered for the student. The Registrar Office will follow up with NSC to identify why the warning flag did not trigger. Moving forward, Registrar Office staff will review enrollment reporting files to verify that each student’s Program Begin Date reflects the first day of the term in which the program enrollment began, unless the student’s enrollment in the program was on an earlier date.