Maintained for Historical Purposes

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(General) Subject: NSLDS Enrollment Reporting - Compliance Notifications

Posted Date:April 21, 2017

Author: Pamela Eliadis, Service Director, System Operations & Aid Delivery Management, Federal Student Aid

Subject: NSLDS Enrollment Reporting - Compliance Notifications

The Department will soon begin sending Enrollment Reporting Compliance Notifications to schools via email. These notifications will be sent by the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) to schools that are not reporting academic program-level enrollment information for at least 90% of the students who are on the school’s NSLDS Enrollment Reporting roster. The threshold is set at 90% to allow for instances where a school may have a small percentage of the students included on its NSLDS Enrollment Reporting roster who are not enrolled in academic programs. While these students are not receiving aid at the reporting institution, they are enrolled in, for example, continuing education coursework.

NSLDS will base these notifications on the school’s Enrollment Reporting Statistics, which can be found on the NSLDS Professional Access website and which are calculated for each of a school’s locations (at the 8-digit OPEID-level). Therefore, a separate notification will be sent for each of the school’s locations that fall below the 90% threshold.

The first notification will be sent to a school if its Enrollment Reporting Statistics fall below 90%. This first notification will be sent to the school’s Financial Aid Administrator contact, as provided by the school, and to the school’s Enrollment Reporting contact, if provided by the school on the ORG tab of the NSLDS Professional Access website. If a school has not yet provided an Enrollment Reporting Contact, which cannot be someone from the school’s third-party servicer, the school should do so as soon as possible. The initial set of these first notifications will be based on Enrollment Reporting Statistics calculated on April 19, 2017 for students who were on schools’ Enrollment Reporting rosters on December 5, 2016.

A second notification will be sent if the school’s academic program reporting performance does not improve. While this second notification will again be sent to the school’s Financial Aid Administrator and to its Enrollment Reporting Contact, we will also provide a copy to the school’s President/CEO.

If, even after receiving the two earlier notifications, a school remains out of compliance, it will receive a third notification that the school has been referred to the Department’s Federal Student Aid Program Compliance office for consideration of possible sanctions. This third notification will be addressed to the school’s President/CEO, with copies to the school’s Financial Aid Administrator and Enrollment Reporting Contact.

All of the notifications will be spaced out over a series of months to provide the school with ample time to improve its statistics.

If, after the school receives its initial notification, its believes that a significant percentage of its students are legitimately not enrolled in an academic program and, therefore, are properly reported only at the campus level and not at the program level, the school should send an email requesting an Enrollment Reporting Compliance Notification Exception. The email should be sent to ERCompliance@ed.gov.

Viewing Statistics, Notification History, and Helpful Information

To view Enrollment Reporting Statistics online and to see if a notification has been sent the school should visit the Enrollment Reporting Statistics page through the Enrollment Reporting Profile page on the NSLDS Professional Access website. This information can be viewed at either the school or school location level. The Enrollment Reporting Statistics table is populated with statistics from the previous twelve months. View the Help Text for specific definitions on each of the fields. If a letter has been sent, a table will appear under the heading Enrollment Compliance Notification History, showing a row for each notification sent.

A forthcoming NSLDS Newsletter, to be published in the next few days, will provide additional information to help schools improve their Enrollment Reporting Statistics.

NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Resources

For more information about NSLDS Enrollment Reporting, refer to the November 2016 version of the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Guide, available on the IFAP Web site. Additional information is available in the NSLDS Reference Materials section of the IFAP Web site.

Contact Information

If you have questions about NSLDS or the above information, contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center at 800/999-8219. You can also contact Customer Support by e-mail at nslds@ed.gov.