Finding Text
Finding 2023-001: Enrollment Reporting - Material Weakness
ALN: 84.268 Federal Direct Loan Program, 84.063 Federal Pell Grant Program
Award Year: July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023
Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Education
Pass-Through Entity: Not applicable
Criteria: Institutions are required to report enrollment information under the Pell grant and the Direct
loan programs via the NSLDS (OMB No. 1845-0035). Institutions must review, update, and certify
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.
Condition: For 3 withdrawn students, the College erroneously reported the effective date of the
withdrawal. For 2 students in a 5-year program, which included a bachelor's and master's program,
the College did not report the student's graduation date from the bachelor's degree program and
utilized the start date of the bachelor's degree program as the start date of the master's program,
resulting in inaccurate reporting. The sample, which consisted of 25 students, was not a statistically
valid sample.
Cause: The College noted the discrepancies in reporting of the withdrawn students to be human
error. The College noted the inaccurate reporting of the students in the 5-year program to be an issue
with their reporting policy in place for this particular program and will update the policy moving
forward.
Effect: The accuracy of Title IV student loan records depends heavily on the accuracy of the
enrollment information reported by the schools. If an institution does not review, update, and verifystudent
enrollment statuses, effective dates of the enrollment status, and other information, then the
Title IV student loan records will be inaccurate, which impacts student loan repayments.
Questioned Costs: None.
Recommendation: It is recommended that the College review policies and procedures in place to
resolve reporting issues in a timely manner to facilitate compliance with Title IV regulations.
Management Response: Currently, the College marks students withdrawn on the date the withdrawal
is officially processed in the system, indicating their last date of attendance. The withdrawal policy will
be updated to indicate that the withdraw date to be reported for all students withdrawing at either the
program or campus level should be processed as the "last date of attendance". In the case of the 5-
year program (4+1 internally), we currently do not officially "enroll" a student into the master's
program until their bachelor's degree is conferred. The official admit date will be updated to reflect the
term a student enters the master's program officially, which will begin after the conferral of their
bachelor's degree. Our policy and processes for the 4+1 program will be updated to reflect this
change.