In an Electronic Announcement posted to the IFAP website on December 23, USDE informed institutions that NSLDS will, as of February 1, 2015, no longer accept enrollment reporting files in file layout formats that are older than those posted to the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site on February 27, 2014. An enrollment reporting file sent in an older format on or after February 1, 2015 will be rejected. Schools have been required to report enrollment, including program-level student enrollment information, to NSLDS in one of the new formats since responding to the first enrollment reporting roster generated on or after October 1, 2014. More information about these requirements is available in Dear Colleague Letters GEN-14-07, GEN-14-17, the NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Webinars held on July 15 and 16 and 30 and 31, and in the Electronic Announcement titled “Reminder of Program-Level Reporting Requirement” posted to the IFAP Web site on September 26, 2014.
IMPORTANT: USDE continues to monitor schools’ compliance with NSLDS enrollment reporting requirements. Within the next few weeks notices will be sent to the Chief Executive Officer (e.g., president, chancellor, owner) of any school that remains out of compliance with these enrollment reporting requirements. Schools that fail to comply with NSLDS enrollment reporting requirements will be referred to the Program Compliance office for action.
Accurate Program-Level Enrollment Reporting
It is critically important for schools to completely and accurately report students’ program-level enrollment information to NSLDS. This information is used to determine the subsidy status of loans under the 150% Direct Subsidized Loan Limit.
Schools must pay particular attention to correctly reporting Published Program Length. After reviewing early submissions of program-level enrollment reporting information, USDE has discovered Published Program Lengths that appear to be reported incorrectly and are unreasonably short. This could harm the student and cause loss of subsidy in circumstances when the student should not lose interest subsidy. The Published Program Length field is a six-digit number with an implied decimal after the third digit.
For example, to report 2 years, the school would enter “002000”. To report 1.5 years the school would enter “001500”.
If a school is reporting program length in weeks or months, it is also essential that the school correctly report the number of weeks of instructional time that the school has defined for its Title IV Academic Year. This number is used by NSLDS to convert the weeks or months value to a value in years to establish the student’s Maximum Eligibility Period for Direct Subsidized Loans.
If you determine that you have incorrectly reported any of a student’s key program-level enrollment information which is used by NSLDS to identify a unique program (CIP Code, Credential Level, and Published Program Length), you must report the student as never having attended (status X) the program that was associated with the inaccurate reporting, and then re-establish the student’s program-level enrollment information by reporting the accurate program-level information.
Student Permanent Address
Schools are now required to report Student Permanent Address along with the campus-level enrollment reporting information. Schools may not have a valid postal address for every student, therefore changes will be implemented regarding the collection of address information early in 2015. Communications to schools on how to handle address information going forward, including how to report if there is no valid address available for a student will also be issued.
NSLDS is not currently rejecting enrollment reporting records if an address is not contained in the school’s submission. For now, schools that do not have a valid address for a student should leave all the address fields on that record blank. If a partial or invalid address is given, it could cause the record to reject.
NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Resources
For more information about NSLDS enrollment reporting requirements, refer to the July 2014 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.
http://www.ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/122314ComplianceProgramLevelEnrollmentReportingNSLDS.html
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