Finding Text
2025‐002 Significant Deficiency: Working During Scheduled Class Time (U.S. Department of Education ‐ Federal Work Study Program, ALN #84.033) Criteria: In accordance with the 2024‐2025 Federal Student Aid Handbook, in general, students are not permitted to work in Federal Work Study positions during scheduled class times. Exceptions are permitted if an individual class is cancelled, if the instructor has excused the student from attending for a particular day, and if the student is receiving credit for employment in an internship, externship, or community work‐study experience. Any such exemptions must be documented. Statement of Condition: During the audit, it was noted that multiple students appear to have been paid for Federal Work Study hours logged and submitted for time the student was scheduled to be in class without verification of reasonable exemption. Questioned Costs: The known monetary error is an over‐payment of $23. Extrapolation of the error across all students and pay periods that may have been affected estimates total possible monetary error of $7,149. Therefore, the monetary impact of this deficiency does not exceed the reporting threshold of $25,000. Perspective Information: The audit included a detailed testing of 5 files for students participating in the Federal Work Study program during the 2024‐2025 award year, and limited detail testing of an additional 6 students’ Federal Work Study documents pertaining to this specific attribute. For the 11 students tested, auditors vouched class schedules, timecards, and paystubs for two specific pay periods, one in each semester. Of these students for the specific pay periods tested, overlap between submitted work study hours paid and classes scheduled without reasonable exception was identified in the records for 2 students. Therefore, we consider the error rate as 18.18%. Cause and Effect: In one case of conflicting times, the student’s professor could not verify whether there had been changes to their regularly scheduled class time to vouch for reasonable exemption for an allowable overlap in time; in the second case, the student manually entered their time for submission, mistakenly overlapping with the beginning of their scheduled class for multiple days during their first week employed. In both instances, supervisors did not identify the conflicts when reviewing and submitting timesheets for payroll processing and funds were paid to the students for the overlapping times, which is prohibited without an adequate exemption that has been appropriately documented. Recommendation: The University should ensure that proper safeguards, in both software and personnel, are in place to prevent, identify, and remediate such errors to prevent over‐payment of federal aid funds. View of Responsible Officials: Management concurs with the auditor’s finding. Due to incomplete documentation of reasonable exemptions, students were paid Federal Work Study funds for time worked during regularly scheduled class meeting times. Corrective action has been implemented to ensure such conflicts are prevented in the future.