Finding Text
Criteria: The Payment and Disbursement Schedules established by the U.S. Department of Education sets forth
the determining amounts of Pell awards. The Payment Schedule provides the maximum scheduled award a student would receive for a full academic year as a full-time student based on their EFC and COA. The Disbursement Schedules are used to determine annual awards for full-time, three-quarter time, half-time, and less-than-half-time students. The 34 CFR 668.2(b) states, for a program that measures progress in credit hours and uses standard terms (semesters, trimesters, or quarters), 12 semester hours or 12 quarter hours per academic term as a full-time student.
Condition: A qualifying student was awarded a Federal Pell Grant for the Fall semester as a full-time student. Upon review of the student’s transcript, it showed the student was enrolled in 10 credit hours, categorizing the student as a three-quarter time student, therefore, an over award of Pell occurred.
Cause and Effect: When a student’s withdrawal from a course is prior to the census date in the College’s student
management system, the dropped course noted per the Registrar’s office will automatically remove the credit hours for the course dropped. If, however, this occurs after the census date, a manual adjustment to the enrollment credits screen is required. Although the dropped course was appropriately reflected for financial aid, direct loans, and Title IV, it was overlooked in the student management system for Pell credits. As a result, an over awarded occurred as the student was treated as full time rather than as three quarters time for Pell.
Recommendation: We recommend that management reconciles student transcripts final credit hours to the credit hours noted in the student management system to ensure awarded Pell grants are at the appropriate amount.
Management Response: We concur with this finding and have reinforced with enrollment staff the internal control procedures to ensure the proper process is followed for students who withdraw or are considered no-shows. The enterprise management system for the College should adjust the credit hours for all dropped courses. Due to the student being administratively withdrawn after the last day to drop courses our system did not adjust these courses from the student financial aid aspect. We are aware of this and working toward ensuring this does not occur in the future. We will be scheduling additional training with our system in the upcoming year address this.