Reporting Separation Statuses

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Reporting Separation Statuses PDF

Transcript
Welcome to today's webinar, reporting student separation statuses. This is part five of the Enrollment Reporting webinar series. Today, we will review how to report separation statuses for your students. Here is today's agenda. First, we'll go over what separation statuses are, what is the importance of reporting separation statuses, how to report separation statuses and then some best practices. The Clearinghouse was created to serve as a trusted agent to our participating institutions and our services are designed to facilitate compliance with FERPA, the Higher Education Act and other applicable laws. As your third party servicer, we provide enrollment and deferment information to guarantee agencies, lenders, servicers and the Department of Education on your institution's behalf. The information loaded into our database can be used for other Clearinghouse services such as StudentTracker and verifications. When reporting enrollment data for compliance purposes, it is important to report accurate and timely data. The Department of Education and the National Student Loan Data System, also known as NSLDS, requires institutions to certify all federal aid recipients at least every two months. Reporting enrollment status changes to the Clearinghouse as swiftly as possible because the Department of Education requires status changes to be sent to NSLDS within 60 days of the date of determination. This includes a timely reporting of Separation statuses for your students. What are the separation statuses? A separation status is an inactive, terminal enrollment status code that should be reported for a student previously certified in an active enrollment status code but is no longer attending your institution. The separation statuses are deceased. This status should be applied to a student's record in the event that they pass away. Graduated. This status should be applied if a student has completed their certificate or degree program. And then withdrawn. This status should be applied when a student is not actively enrolled or stops attending during a required term and is not eligible for the deceased or graduated status. Now we'll go over the calculated withdrawn process. Students reported in an active status that are not re-enrolled in the next required term should be reported with the appropriate separation status. As previously mentioned, timely reporting of separation statuses is part of the expectations from NLSDS and the Department of Education. The calculated withdrawn process was put in place to assist institutions that are not able to generate students onto the first of term file as withdrawn since they are not actively enrolled in the new term. When a first of term file for a required term is submitted, our system will search for all active records listed for your institution in the Clearinghouse database that were not reported on the file. The records are then autogenerated onto the file as withdrawn at the campus and program level as applicable. The term end date from the students's previous term is used as the status start date as this is the last known date of attendance for the student. Due to the 2014 NSDLS implementation of 150% reporting, NSLDS not only made campus level enrollment data required but also the program level enrollment data. NSLDS began utilizing the program level enrollment to calculate a new program length based time limit to aid recipients eligibility for direct subsidized loans. This means that the NSLDS expects institutions to report graduated statuses for unique completed programs regardless of how long the student has been withdrawn from the school, if they are currently in an in school status at the school or if they are currently enrolled elsewhere. In the event a student completes a program, NSLDS requires schools report the graduated status at the program level for the unique completed program. If the student completed all current programs of enrollment and has a last date of attendance, the graduated status can be reported overall at the campus level in addition to the program level enrollment. Because NSLDS calculates the 150% direct loan limit for specific borrowers, it is critical that graduated statuses be accurately reflected in the enrollment history in the Clearinghouse database at the respective campus and program levels. There are four ways to report separation statuses to the Clearinghouse for students. Through Enrollment Reporting files for the term, on graduates only enrollment files, through the student lookup tab on our secure website when submitting an online update and then through the G from Degree file process. As students enter into separation statuses during the term, students should be included in the next regular Enrollment Reporting file with the appropriate separation status applied to their record. This includes the final subsequent of term file for the term also known as the end of term file. If you are unable to capture separation statuses on the end of term files the most preferred method is to report them via a graduates only enrollment file. The graduates only file is also known as a grad only or a g only file. These files are intended to capture the appropriate separation statuses at the respective campus and or program level to close out the record as G for graduated or with a W for withdrawn. Graduate only files are the only file type that can be processed after the reporting for a new term has begun. It is ideal to have the Graduate file come in before reporting for the new term, especially if students graduate and then immediately reenroll, but we do understand that sometimes it can't be avoided. Typically there are zero to few errors on the Graduates only files. However, there are two common error codes that occur on graduate files that we will take a moment to review. One of the most common error codes on graduates only enrollment files is the error code 252. Error code 252 occurs when a student is reported with different term dates than what was previously reported. This error can occur on regular enrollment files, but we are going to focus on one of the most common reasons that they would occur specifically on a graduate only file. Let's review an example of when an error 252 may occur on a grad file. Jane student is reported at the end of the Fall 2022 term with the fall term dates and an active status at the campus level and in her bachelor's program. Before the institution is able to generate the Graduate only file, the spring first of term file is submitted. The student information system correctly pulls Jane in on this file to reflect her new term dates, the active status at the campus level and her new master's program and then the graduated status in the completed bachelor's program. Even though the bachelor program was reported as graduated on the spring first of term file, Jane is pulled in on the grad only file. This in itself is not an issue and you are more than welcome to report a graduated status more than once. However, when this data was pulled, the term dates for fall and a campus level graduated status were pulled onto the grad file instead of the spring active status and term dates. This would generate the error 252 on the Graduate only file error report because Jane was already reported with her new spring data previously. To correct this error, the term dates, campus status and status start date should be updated. And the active master's program should be added to the record to reflect both the spring data as well as the completed bachelor's program. Performing these updates will create an error code 81, but as long as the record reflects accurate data for the student, it can be accepted on the file. The second most common error code that occurs on a graduates only file is the error code 81. The error code 81 occurs when a student is reported in active status, withdrawn or deceased on a graduates only file. This error code generates because historically before one 150% reporting graduate only files only captured graduated statuses at the campus level and programs were not reported at that time. Now that program data is reported, it is becoming more common for students to arrive on the Graduate file with a mixed combination of active and completed campus and program data. When presented with this warning code, we would recommend detailing into each record by clicking the circle plus button under the details column. You'll want to review the campus and program level data for accuracy. The record should reflect the student's campus and program level status and status start dates, the term dates as of the certification date of the file. We often see error code 81 occur just as the student in the sample record. The student is being reported as full-time at the campus level, full-time in program one and then graduated from program two. If this accurately reflects the students enrollment record to report that the student completed program two and they intend to continue their enrollment at the institution to pursue their program one, then no action is required and the error code 81 can be returned and accepted on the file. Going back to the ways to report separation statuses, the third option is utilizing the student lookup tab on the Clearinghouse's secure website. This option is for performing a low volume of updates if you are unable to include them on scheduled enrollment files. Be sure that the information manually submitted via the student lookup tab matches the information for the student in your student information system to avoid errors from occurring on the next scheduled enrollment file to the Clearinghouse. Online updates to report separation statuses should only be submitted once. While we are on the topic of online updates, I want to take a moment to mention a reminder about the online updates. Most online updates cannot be submitted or processed when there is a file in house. If you attempt to update a student's record and the file in house is preventing you from submitting the update, you will encounter an alert box like the one pictured here. The alert advises you to reach out to the Clearinghouse for assistance. If the update is for a student that is being reported on the current enrollment file in house, you may reach out to the assigned analyst to determine if the information that needs to be updated is already reflected on the file or to see if the change can be applied to the file before processing. Factors such as the certification date and the type of update will determine if they can apply the change to the file. If the student is not being reported on the current enrollment file, the analyst assigned to your files will not be able to perform the update on your behalf so please avoid sending the information to them that needs to be updated. Instead, feel free to reach out to check on the status of the file. We often find that an error report is posted to the web for the school to review and we are not able to process the file until all errors and warnings are reviewed and confirmed or corrected. The G from Degree process, which is also known as G from DV, is the fourth way to report separation statuses. This process is only eligible for institutions that participate in our DegreeVerify service. For our G from DV participating institutions, we highly recommend submitting the separation statuses on the end of term files or via graduates only enrollment files and only relying on the G from DV as a supplemental backup. The next webinar in this series is solely dedicated to the G from DV process. That webinar will explain the difference between the DegreeVerify and enrollment files and the two databases as well as explaining the G applied and G not applied tabs. Registration for the next G from Degree webinar can be found on the Clearinghouse Academy website. Based on what we covered today here are some Enrollment Reporting best practices. Submit on time and in-sync with your submission schedule and file type. Save and process your error resolution on the web reports in a timely manner. Report graduated statuses at the camp campus and program levels as appropriate and as degree audits are completed continuing to report until all graduated students have been reported. Subscribing to the Compliance Central blog to keep up to date with the latest compliance information from our compliance and data operations department. And for any specific questions or examples that you would need assistance with or have looked into, you can always contact School Ops at studentclearinghouse.org or you can give us a call at 73742 4880 with any questions related to Enrollment Reporting. Thank you so much for joining us. If you have any questions, you may email our data operations team at schoolOps@studentclearinghouse.org and any one of our analysts will be happy to help.