Finding Text
2024-001 Significant Deficiency: TEACH Grant Sequester Miscalculation (U.S. Department of Education, Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education Grants, ALN #84.379)
Criteria: In accordance with the Electric Announcement General 23-37 and the Budget Control Act of 2011, the statutory award amount for all TEACH Grant awards where the first disbursement is on or after Oct. 1, 2020, and before Oct. 1, 2024, must be reduced by 5.70%.
Statement of Condition: During the 2024 audit, it was noted that the University miscalculated the sequester for a student, resulting in an under-award.
Questioned Costs: This finding is monetary in nature. In the instance noted in testing, the total error is $36 in under-award. Extrapolation of this monetary error estimates a total potential error of $63. This does not exceed the $25,000 reporting threshold for monetary error within Federal Award Programs.
Perspective Information: The audit included a detailed testing of 1 file for students who had received TEACH, so the identification of this error in the student’s file review results in an error rate of 100%. This does exceed the reporting threshold of 10% for Federal Award Programs.
Cause and Effect: Due to oversight by the financial aid counselor awarding a student’s TEACH grant, a student received fewer TEACH grant dollars than those for which they were eligible.
Recommendation: The University should ensure that sequester fees are appropriately calculated and that amounts disbursed to students are in line with the regulations. The director of financial aid should provide a review check on such calculations.
View of Responsible Officials: The University acknowledges this finding. The error occurred when entering the TEACH Grant into Colleague. Instead of awarding $1886 for both fall and spring, the last two digits were transposed and thus $1868 was entered for fall and spring creating the $36 under-award for the year. Financial Aid has instituted a new practice that all TEACH Grant awards are double checked when awarded and before the start of each term to make sure that the correct amount was awarded and that an entry error does not occur again.