Finding Text
2022-002 US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Student Financial Assistance Cluster CFDA# 84.033, 84.063, 84.007, and 84.268 Special Tests and Provisions - Refunds Significant Deficiency in Internal Control over Compliance Criteria: A school must return unearned funds for which it is responsible as soon as possible but no later than 45 days after the date of determination of a student?s withdrawal. Condition: During our testing we found three students that officially withdrew from classes and owed refunds, but the refund to Department of Education was past the 45 day period. Cause: The College does not have an adequate process in place to notify financial aid of official withdrawals and the exceptions noted above were discovered by the college during the review of final grades, which was already past the 45 day period. The college also relies on the CNS import date as a control over these procedures but has fount that the import date is not always reliable. Effect: The College is not in compliance with the federal refund requirements described in the OMB Compliance Supplement and required by the Department of Education. Questioned Costs: None reported Context/Sampling: The College disbursed Federal financial aid to approximately 515 students in the 2021-2022 school year. A non-statistical sampling of 40 students was selected for testing but only 2 refunds were found in that testing. The College does not issue vary many refunds, so we selected 7 additional items for an infrequently operating control. Repeat Finding: No Auditor?s recommendation: We recommend the school implement a process to insure that withdrawals are communicated to financial aid immediately so they are aware of the refund calculations. Most of the refunds are for inadvertent over awards and notification of the withdrawal will assist in this issue as well. Management?s response: Students who officially withdraw from courses are required to fill out a Docusign form that is then submitted to the Academic Records department. Upon receipt of this form AR will process the withdrawal and make notes in Campus Nexus as to the date of withdraw (this is the current process as well). Financial Aid will be added to that process and those Docusign forms will be automatically forwarded to financial aid once they are processed. This way we will be able to make sure we stay within the day window for refunds. Financial aid continues to run the R2T4 report multiple times throughout the term to ensure there is plenty of time to process refunds within the 45 day mark. Additionally, our Conclusive system now has a total withdraw report available. Academic Records will give the financial aid director permission to run that report directly. The director will run this report along side the R2T4 report out of Campus Nexus to ensure we are capturing all students in a timely fashion. Students who unofficially withdraw (students who receive an FA grade at the end of the term) are not reported until the end of the term since students do have the ability to return at any time throughout the term to try and pass the class. The financial aid director has been working with the office of instruction to make sure this process is more clear and to offer trainings to faculty. We have been able to clean up the definition of an FA grade for faculty this past year, faculty have been asked to report attendance in week 9 of the quarter and this has helped with the last date of attendance reporting for Fall 2022- current term.