Finding 1171380 (2025-001)

Material Weakness Repeat Finding
Requirement
N
Questioned Costs
-
Year
2025
Accepted
2026-01-30

AI Summary

  • Core Issue: The District failed to report accurate student enrollment statuses and dates to NSLDS for 22 out of 60 students, indicating a significant deficiency in compliance.
  • Impacted Requirements: Institutions must ensure timely and accurate reporting of enrollment information as per OMB Compliance Supplement guidelines.
  • Recommended Follow-Up: Implement a process to regularly review and verify enrollment statuses and effective dates on the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Roster.

Finding Text

Criteria OMB Compliance Supplement, OMB No. 1845-0035 – 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). 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 which the financial aid administrator can access for the auditor. The data on the institutions’ 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”, both of which need to be reported accurately and have separate record types. The NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Guide provides the requirements and guidance for reporting enrollment details using the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Process. Institutions are responsible for timely reporting, whether they report directly or via a third-party servicer. Condition Significant Deficiency in Internal Control over Compliance and Noncompliance – During our review of the enrollment reporting requirements we observed the following: For 22 out of 60 students, the District did not report the students’ accurate enrollment status to NSLDS. For 2 out of 60 students, the District did not report the correct date that the students’ change in enrollment occurred. For 1 out of 60 students, the District did not report the correct program start date. For 3 out of 60 students, the District did not certify the students’ enrollment status within the required timeframe. Questioned Costs There are no questioned costs associated with the condition identified. Context We tested a non-statistical sample of 60 students out of 15,341 students that the District disbursed Pell grants and Direct loans to that required student enrollment and program enrollment reporting to NSLDS. Effect The District is not in compliance with the Federal enrollment requirements described in the OMB Compliance Supplement. Cause The District did not accurately report enrollment information for students under the Pell grant and Direct loan programs via NSLDS timely or accurately. Repeat Finding (Yes or No) No. Recommendation The District should implement a process to review, update, and verify student enrollment statuses, effective dates and program information that appear on the Enrollment Reporting Roster files or on the Enrollment Maintenance page of the NSLDS Professional Access (NSLDSFAP) website.

Corrective Action Plan

Views of Responsible Officials and Corrective Action Plan Due to programmatic update requirements mandated by state initiative AB 789, previously reported academic programs required recalculated timeframes. Concurrently, the District undertook a data cleanup initiative to ensure that each student declares only one active program of study, instead of multiple active programs. These adjustments, while essential for compliance and data accuracy, resulted in data discrepancies within the enrollment reporting files. Although the District has been diligently working to resolve these issues, the NSLDS reporting process requires all prior-term errors to be fully resolved before a subsequent term’s file can be submitted. As a result, the time required to correct all identified errors in the prior term caused delays in successful transmission to NSLDS within the required timeframe. The District has completed a comprehensive review to identify the causes of these reporting errors and is implementing an improvement plan with a defined timeline. Specifically, the programming logic used to generate the NSLDS upload file has been rewritten to ensure compliance with updated reporting parameters. Additionally, Admissions and Records offices have established a post-upload review process to conduct spot checks of enrollment data after each NSLDS submission to verify accuracy and prevent future delays. As the District gains more experience with the updated process and completes the backlog of pending submissions, the District is confident that future enrollment reports will be transmitted to NSLDS accurately within the required timeframe.

Categories

Student Financial Aid

Other Findings in this Audit

  • 1171376 2025-001
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171377 2025-001
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171378 2025-001
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171379 2025-001
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171381 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171382 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171383 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171384 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1171385 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat

Programs in Audit

ALN Program Name Expenditures
84.268 FEDERAL DIRECT STUDENT LOANS $3.91M
84.048 CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION -- BASIC GRANTS TO STATES $1.66M
84.031 HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONAL AID $1.07M
84.007 FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY GRANTS $836,002
84.033 FEDERAL WORK-STUDY PROGRAM $713,261
21.027 CORONAVIRUS STATE AND LOCAL FISCAL RECOVERY FUNDS $538,405
84.044 TRIO TALENT SEARCH $361,908
84.047 TRIO UPWARD BOUND $270,492
84.116 FUND FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION $214,001
47.076 STEM EDUCATION (FORMERLY EDUCATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES) $165,523
84.335 CHILD CARE ACCESS MEANS PARENTS IN SCHOOL $160,374
93.558 TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES $134,217
84.063 FEDERAL PELL GRANT PROGRAM $51,955
10.558 CHILD AND ADULT CARE FOOD PROGRAM $25,405
93.658 FOSTER CARE TITLE IV-E $10,506
64.117 SURVIVORS AND DEPENDENTS EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE $3,504