Finding 962576 (2023-001)

Assistance Listing Number, Federal Agency, and Program Name - Student Financial Assistance Cluster - Federal Direct Student Loan Program ALN 84.268 and Federal Pell Grants ALN 84.063 Federal Award Identification Number and Year - Various Pass-through Entity - None Finding Type - Significant deficiency Repeat Finding - No Criteria - Changes in a student's status are required to be reported to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) within 30 days of the change or included in a student status confirmation report sent to the NSLDS within 60 days of the status change (Pell, 34 CFR Section 690.83(b); Direct Loan, 34 CFR Section 685.309(b)). Condition - The University did not report the status changes of certain students to the NSLDS in an accurate and timely manner during the fiscal year. Questioned Costs - None Identification of How Questioned Costs Were Computed - Not applicable Context - There were three errors identified that were attributed to this finding. Of the 40 students tested, 2 students' status changes were not received by NSLDS, and 1 student's status change was reported as a withdrawal instead of a leave of absence. Cause and Effect - The University did not have a control in place to ensure all enrollment changes are reported timely and accurately to the NSLDS. As a result, certain student status changes were not reported to the NSLDS in a timely and accurate manner. Recommendation - The University should implement controls to ensure student status changes are reported accurately and timely to the NSLDS. These controls should include a thorough review of the enrollment rosters prior to reporting to the NSLDS. Views of Responsible Officials and Corrective Action Plan - The University agrees with the condition of the finding. The University submits student rosters to NSC every 30 days, certainly meeting federal regulations. Academic year 2022-2023 was no different regarding our timely submissions of data. What was different, however, was the use of a brand new campuswide software system (Workday) for that academic year. During the academic year, the University identified SSN values brought into the Workday system from a students' ISIR did not populate the SSN field used to submit data to NSC. An internal report was created to identify students needing an edit to their personal data. This was the immediate and internal solution to fix the problem. During the same time frame, Workday identified the same problem and created a systemwide fix resolving this problem. The software update was released in March 2023 and became immediately active. Documentation of the Workday software implementation is available if desired.