Finding 371022 (2023-004)

Treatment of a student who fails to receive a passing grade in any class (Significant Deficiency) Department of Education, SFA Cluster. Criteria: An institution must have a procedure for determining whether a Title IV aid recipient who began attendance during a period completed the period or should be treated as a withdrawal. If a student who began attendance and has not officially withdrawn fails to earn a passing grade in at least one course offered over an entire period, the school must assume, for Title IV purposes, that the student has unofficially withdrawn, unless the institution can document that the student completed the period. In the absence of evidence of a last day of attendance, a school must consider a student who failed to earn a passing grade in all classes to be an unofficial withdrawal. Condition: From a population of 35 students that received all failing grades in a term, we tested five students and noted that documentation of the last date of attendance could not be provided for any of the students tested. Cause: The College considers students that receive a grade of F to have attended the entire period, however, no written attendance policy exists to this effect and no documentation could be provided to support the last day of the student’s attendance at an academically related subject. Effect: Since there is no formal written policy requiring instructors to utilize different grades for students that fail a class after attending the entire term and for students that failed to attend through the end of the term, it is unclear whether the students attended through the end of the period and whether the students required refunds. Repeat Finding from a Prior Year: No Recommendation: We recommend the College implement a policy in which instructors are required to retain documentation of a student’s last date of attendance and the grades assigned to a student failing a class indicate whether the student attended through the end of the period or stopped attending prior to the end of the period. In addition, we recommend documentation of a student’s last date of attendance at an academically related class be maintained. Management Response: Agree with finding. Based on review of process, Financial Aid had been emailing to find out whether students had completed work after 50% of the term had been completed, and assuming that any course that did not provide such evidence was an unofficial withdrawal. But we agree that we need to have a more easily verifiable system of documentation of last date of attendance and a corrective action plan will be implemented by April 2024.