2024-003: National Student Loan Data System
Condition: The college did not properly report student enrollment changes for students who received federal student aid to NSLDS.
Context: During testing of 60 students, 15 students were enrollment changes submitted past 60 days, 6 students had incorrect effective dates on campus enrollment, 5 were not certified at least every 60 days, 6 had program enrollment effective dates that did not match institutional records, 4 had incorrect program enrollment statuses, and 4 had incorrect program begin dates.
Cause: The College did not have proper procedures in place to verify students’ status in NSLDS matched the institutions records in a timely manner.
View of responsible official:
MACC believes some of the current audit finding may be attributed to the SIS system implemented in November 2022; and these finding occurred before we implemented our Corrective Action Plan, which we have faithfully followed every month. As noted below, our CAP is a process in which we review enrollment records reported to NSLDS and update, if needed. Supporting documentation and verification of the work that has been done this past year can be provided, if needed.
As a result of the continued commitment to submit correct data from our system to NSLDS every month, this fall MACC paid more than $12,000 to our software vendor (Jenzabar) for enhancements needed to collect, retain and report enrollment data.
• Jenzabar created and installed a custom process to update the NSC status start date and NSC program status start date to the Last Date of Attendance. We began running this custom process with the November 2024 NSC enrollment file.
• Jenzabar created and installed a custom process to update program begin dates for students returning to the same program to the original program begin date. We have implemented this as a scheduled process beginning December 2024.
We are confident future reviews of our NSLDS enrollment reporting records will reflect greater accuracy.
MACC would like to note, although the auditors are noting several students with effective date issues and failure to report students timely, we have evidence of student records being exported from our system every month and recorded in the Program Certification Details within NSLDS, but the data is not found in the Program Enrollment Effective Date area of NSLDS. We acknowledge the data must be in both areas of NSLDS, but we believe there is evidence that we submitted our records as required. We are hopeful the new enhancements will correct this issue.
As disclosed in our audit response for 2022-2023, the corrective action plan has been slightly altered, but continues:
• The Registrar will review data in J1 and submit enrollment records to NSC each month.
• The Registrar will also work with the Director of Administrative Computing to ensure program information and other vital data are reported correctly.
• After the enrollment file is accepted by NSC, MACC will review correct enrollment information in NSLDS for all students who have withdrawn from all classes and/or have had an R2T4 calculation, for accuracy.
o The Registrar, or designee, will review the data in NSC.
o The Director of Financial Aid, or designee, will review the data in NSLDS.
• Discrepancies will be addressed between the Registrar and Financial Aid Offices immediately; and will utilize the Director of Administrative Computing to assist with configuration changes and data clean-up.
• The records will be maintained in a designated Teams folder.
Name(s) of the contact person(s) responsible for corrective action: Amy Hager and Amy See (Registrar).
Planned completion date for corrective action plan: We expect the plan will be an ongoing effort to ensure compliance.