University of Mount Union

Federal Program ? Department of Education, Student Financial Assistance Cluster; Federal Pell Grant Program, CFDA 84.063; Federal Direct Loan Program, CFDA 84.268 Program Year ? July 1, 2018 ? June 30, 2019 Criteria or Specific Requirement ? Special Tests and Provisions ? Enrollment Reporting ? Under the Pell grant and loan programs, universities must complete and return within 30 days the Enrollment Reporting roster file. Once received, the institution must update for changes in student status, report the date the enrollment status was effective, enter the new anticipated completion date and submit the changes electronically through the batch method or the NSLDS website. Institutions are responsible for timely reporting, whether they report directly or via a third-party servicer. Unless the school expects to complete its next roster within 60 days, the University must notify the lender or the guaranty agency within 30 days, if it discovers that a student who received a loan either did not enroll or ceased to be enrolled on at least a half-time basis. (FPL, 34 CFR Section 674.19; Pell, 34 CFR Section 690.83(b)(2); Direct Loan, 34 CFR Section 685.309). Condition ? Notification of the student status change (graduated, withdrew, less than half-time) did not reach the NSLDS within the required timeframe. Questioned Costs ? None. Context ? Out of a sample of 40 students from a population of 373 students who had changes in status during the year, NSLDS was not provided timely notification for 31 of the student status changes reviewed. Our sample was not, and was not intended to be, statistically valid. Effect ? The correct status was not reported timely to NSLDS. Cause ? Information between the University and NSLDS was not updated timely. This could have been a result of the degree verify file not processing correctly after submission to the Clearinghouse. Identification as a Repeat Finding ? Yes. Recommendation ? We recommend the University ensure the graduate submission is sent timely after each graduation date.

Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions ? When submitting the Degree Verify files for the Spring 2019 term, we duplicated the process and reporting method that was successfully submitted and processed for Fall 2018. Unlike that Fall 2018 submission, the Spring 2019 submission did not capture the ?G? or Graduated status of the Spring 2019 graduates. We did not get an error report from the National Student Clearinghouse, so we presumed the report accurately portrayed the graduated status of the Spring 2019 graduates, as it did in Fall 2018. We understand this will be a major finding in our audit for a second year; however, the circumstances of this matter differ from the previous year (year ended 2018) and have led us to identify and create additional verifications that will allow us to correct the statuses of students not captured within 30 days by the National Student Clearinghouse and NSLDS. These include: 1) Manual verification of each graduate status after the University submits the Degree Verify file to the National Student Clearinghouse. While we did not manually verify the data for Spring 2019 within 30 days, we had reason to presume we did not need to, given our successful Fall 2018 submission. 2) Manual correction of each student graduated status in both the National Student Clearinghouse and NSLDS, 3) We will continue to submit a Graduate Only file. Last year we noted this and followed the process, but because we did not receive error reports on our Degree Verify submission, this process did not work. We will continue to work closely with Student Financial Aid to verify that the data regarding graduated students was properly transmitted from the National Student Clearinghouse to NSLDS. This process began with Summer 2019 graduates and will continue.

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