Finding Text
Finding 2023-001 Notices and Authorizations: (Significant Deficiency)
Federal Agency: Department of Education
Program: Federal Direct Student Loans
AL #: 84.268
Award Year: 2022-2023
Criteria: Per CFR 668.165(a)(1) through CFR 668.165a(2) before an institution disburses title IV, HEA program funds for any award year, the institution must notify a student of the amount of funds that the student or his or her parent can expect to receive under each title IV, HEA program, and how and when those funds will be disbursed. If those include Direct Loan program funds, the notice must indicate which funds are from subsidized loans, which are from unsubsidized loans and which are from PLUS loans. The institution must notify the student or parent of:
1) The anticipated date and amount of disbursement.
2) The student’s or parent’s right to cancel all or a portion of that loan, loan disbursement, TEACH Grant, or TEACH Grant disbursement and have the loan proceeds or TEACH Grant proceeds returned to the Secretary; and
3) The procedures and time by which the student or parent must notify the institution that he or she wishes to cancel the loan, loan disbursement, TEACH Grant, or TEACH Grant disbursement.
Condition: The written notifications were not provided to students in October 2022.
Cause: There was a change in the student financial aid system in the current year resulting in no automated notice being sent out. Under the prior system, this was an automated notification.
Effect: The proper notifications were not provided to the students or his or her parent.
Questioned Costs: None.
Context: Only the October 2022 notifications were not provided. Thus, this is not a system problem.
Repeat Finding: Not considered a repeat finding.
Recommendation: We recommend the University designate one individual with the responsibility to verify all notifications are provided timely.
Views of Responsible Officials: During the transition from Jenzabar CX to Jenzabar JFA software, the process to notify students of their loan and TEACH grant disbursements and rights to cancel needed to be rebuilt. The process in CX was fully automated, while the process in JFA was not fully automated for the 2022-23 audit cycle. As a result, there were some students in October of 2022 that did not receive their required notification.
For the 2023-24 cycle, the Director of Financial Aid has worked with Jenzabar to establish a more automated process for these notifications. Two separate queries have been established to identify loan disbursements and TEACH recipients. Each query looks for disbursements that occurred that day and collects them in a batch. An automated “scheduler” then runs each group through a notification process where each student will receive an email to their Thomas More email account notifying them that they received the disbursement that day. The scheduler runs this process and sends notifications out at 8pm each evening. Any loan disbursements occur during normal business hours, and even if delayed, would not disburse past 6pm, so each disbursement that occurred that day will be caught by the scheduler by 8pm.