Finding 1579 (2023-001)

Disbursements to Ineligible Students Planned Corrective Action: While the Office of Financial Aid sought to replicate controls that were in place within the legacy system, the noted disbursements to ineligible students were a direct result of the system conversion to Workday. The following measures have been or will be taken to prevent such disbursements in the future. Transfer credit evaluation (prior degree and TEACH grant) To ensure students with prior bachelor’s degrees are not awarded incorrectly, the office will coordinate with the Registrar’s Office to ensure that all undergraduate students with a prior degree are flagged immediately after transcript evaluation. The transfer credit coordinator will notify the Office of Financial Aid. If the student’s ISIR does not reflect they have earned a prior bachelor’s degree the student will be notified and the ISIR will be corrected. Existing award programming prevents students with ISIRs indicating a prior degree from being awarded aid for which they are ineligible. To ensure transfer students with GPAs that do not meet the requirements to receive TEACH grant are not awarded incorrectly, the office will conduct a review of all transfer students awarded TEACH grant once all their transcripts have been received to ensure they meet transfer GPA eligibility requirements. Loans in excess of limits To ensure students are not awarded loans in excess of their aggregate limits, the financial aid operations department has begun to proactively review NSLDS data for any student that is seen to be approaching loan limits. When an ISIR indicates an eligibility amount that is less than a single year’s maximum award, the operations department reviews NSLDS and overrides aggregate totals as needed to ensure students are not awarded over their limits. We are going to work with our post-implementation consulting partner, Alchemy, to determine other best practices within Workday. Pell Grant awarded for courses that do not apply to student’s program of study To ensure students are not awarded Pell grant for courses that do not apply to their program of study, the office developed reports to compare the financial aid load used to calculate the award with the financial aid loan within the student’s program of study. While these reports were in use during the 2022-2023 award year, there were some academic programs that had to be updated because of issues with their initial setup. Those changes have abated in this second academic year, but the financial aid technician will conduct a final check in the last week of the 7A and 7B terms so any changes to program of study load status can be reevaluated. Person Responsible for Corrective Action Plan: Michael Sapienza, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Services Anticipated Date of Completion: Necessary reports and calculations will be developed prior to December 1, 2023. Review will continue on a continuous basis.