Finding Text
Federal Program Information: Education Stabilization Fund (ALN 84.425E)
Criteria or Specific Requirement: Institutions must receive affirmative written consent before providing an emergency financial aid grant to a student’s
account.
Condition: For certain emergency grant recipients, the College was unable to provide documentation showing that the students consented to the College crediting grant funds to their student accounts.
Cause: Administrative oversight and insufficient internal controls.
Effect or Potential Effect: The College was not in compliance with federal guidelines over making emergency financial aid grants to students.
Questioned Costs: None.
Context: For 5 of 25 emergency grants tested, the College was unable to provide the necessary documentation to ascertain whether affirmative written consent was obtained.
Identification as a Repeat Finding: There was no similar finding identified during the prior year.
Recommendation: We recommend the College enhance its procedures over awarding and disbursing financial aid to ensure adherence to all federal guidelines.
Views of Responsible Officials: The offering of HEERF grant funding was emailed to all students. Students would opt in or opt out which would generate a response email. The acceptance responses were sent to two staff e-mails in the communication department as well as the previous Financial Aid Director. Unfortunately, all three staff members have left BSC and their email accounts have been closed. Beginning the spring of 2022, all HEERF acceptance emails were saved in an institutional shared drive to ensure appropriate record keeping.