Finding Text
Federal Program Information: Federal Pell Grant Program (ALN 84.063), Federal Direct Student Loans (ALN 84.268)
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). 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,” 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. Institutions must complete and return within 15 days the Enrollment Reporting roster file placed in their Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) (OMB No. 1845-0002) mailboxes sent by ED via NSLDS. After the institution submits the Enrollment Reporting roster to NSLDS, NSLDS evaluates the Enrollment Reporting roster and provides the institution an Error/Acknowledgement file. If errors are identified, institutions have 10 days to correct the errors and resubmit to NSLDS.
Condition: Campus Level: Certain students’ enrollment status changes were not reported timely to NSLDS.
Additionally, error records were not corrected within the required timeframe.
Cause: Administrative oversight.
Effect or Potential Effect: The College was not in compliance with the enrollment reporting requirements.
Questioned Costs: None.
Context: For 2 of 35 campus level records tested, the College did not certify the student’s enrollment data within 60 days.
Error records from an Error/Acknowledgement file received during the fiscal year were not corrected within 10 days.
Identification as a Repeat Finding: This is a repeat of prior year Finding 2021-004.
Recommendation: We recommend the College enhance its procedures over enrollment reporting to ensure students’ enrollment statuses are reported to NSLDS in a timely and accurate manner.
Views of Responsible Officials: The College has had significant staff turnover within the last year. The Office of Academic Records was operating with one staff member at that time. It is now operating at full staff capacity and will be better able to follow up on reporting errors to make necessary corrections.
The findings for students with incorrect NSLDS status reports were corrected in March 2023.
The College is working on a better, more comprehensive withdrawal policy in the next academic year which will assist in identifying non-returning students at an earlier date to better fit the 60-day allotted time frame. In addition, the Office of Academic Records plans to alter enrollment reporting schedules to better fit our academic calendar to meet the 60-day time frame requirement. This change should capture our Fall and Winter graduates within the allotted time requirement.