Finding Text
Federal Program Information: Federal Pell Grant Program (ALN 84.063), Federal Direct Student Loans (ALN 84.268)
Criteria or Specific Requirement: N. Special Tests and Provisions – Enrollment Reporting – Institutions are required to report enrollment information under the Pell grant and the Direct and Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) loan programs via the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) (OMB No. 1845-0035), although FFEL loans are no longer made or a part of the Student Financial Assistance Cluster, a student may have a FFEL loan from previous years that would require enrollment reporting for that student (Pell, 34 CFR 690.83(b)(2); FFEL, 34 CFR 682.610; Direct Loan, 34 CFR 685.309). The administration of the Title IV programs depends heavily on the accuracy and timeliness of the enrollment information reported by institutions. Institutions must review, update, and verify student enrollment statuses, program information, and effective dates that appear on the Enrollment Reporting Roster file or on the Enrollment Maintenance page of the NSLDS Professional Access (NSLDSFAP) website which the financial aid administrator can access for the auditor. The data on the institution’s Enrollment Reporting Roster, or Enrollment Maintenance page, is what NSLDS has as the most recently certified enrollment information. There are two categories of enrollment information, “Campus Level” and “Program Level,” both of which need to be reported accurately and have separate record types. The NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Guide provides the requirements and guidance for reporting enrollment details using the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Process.
Campus Level: Institutions are responsible for accurately reporting certain significant data elements under the Campus- Level Record that the U.S. Department of Education considers high risk, including enrollment status, which is the student’s enrollment status as of the reporting date; full-time (F), threequarter time (Q), half-time (H), less than half-time (L), leave of absence (A), graduated (G), withdrawn (W), deceased (D), never attended (X) and record not found (Z).
Program Level: Institutions are responsible for accurately reporting certain significant data elements under the Program Level Record that the U.S. Department of Education considers high risk, including CIP Code – The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) is a set of codes that define fields of study. CIP Codes are maintained by ED's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). They were most recently updated in 2020 and are usually updated every ten years.
Institutions are responsible for timely reporting, whether they report directly or via a third-party servicer. Institutions must complete and return within 15 days the Enrollment Reporting roster file placed in their Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) (OMB No. 1845-0002) mailboxes sent by ED via NSLDS. After the institution submits the Enrollment Reporting roster to NSLDS, NSLDS evaluates the Enrollment Reporting roster and provides the institution an Error/Acknowledgement file. If errors are identified, institutions have 10 days to correct the errors and resubmit to NSLDS.
Condition: Campus Level: Certain students’ enrollment status changes were reported outside of the required timeframe.
Additionally, error records were not corrected within the required timeframe.
Cause: Administrative oversight.
Effect or Potential Effect: The University was not in compliance with the enrollment reporting requirements.
Questioned Costs: None.
Context: For 1 of 25 campus level records tested, the University did not certify the students’ enrollment data within 60 days.
Population of errors identified in Error/Acknowledgement files included 3 errors that repeated and were thus not corrected within the 10-day timeframe.
Identification as a Repeat Finding: There was no similar finding identified during the prior year.
Recommendation: We recommend the University enhance its procedures over enrollment reporting to ensure students’ enrollment statuses are reported accurately and timely to NSLDS, and that all errors are corrected within the required timeframe.
Views of Responsible Officials: We manually reported a student as withdrawn on 2/17/2023. The status change came in as an error on the 3/16/2023 submission (the following month) and we manually updated the status and status start date for the student again. However, it looks like the student’s status reverted to Three-Quarter time on the final transmission on 5/1/2023. We will commit to closer monitoring of withdrawals submitted manually by our office on subsequent enrollment transmissions through the Clearinghouse.