Greetings MACRAO,
Since there has been lots of questions lately surrounding NSC reporting, I thought some of you might be interested in the recent correspondence I’ve had with NSC… looking forward to more discussion with everyone this October!
Best,
Cassie
From: Sean McTighe [mailto:mctighe@studentclearinghouse.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2016 11:15 AM
To: Hall, Cassie
Cc: Gloria Jarrett; Dannette Sullivan; Amy Cecchett; Kristie Jarrett
Subject: RE: Researching Student w/o mark of G
Good afternoon, Cassie.
My name is Sean McTighe, and I am the Director of our School and Education Finance Industry Operations teams here at the Clearinghouse. I know you’ve been working closely with my team on some recent concerns related to our G from DegreeVerify service. Dannette was kind enough to copy me on your request, and I wanted to take the opportunity to communicate with you directly. I’ve included responses to each of your concerns below in red. If you would like to have an additional conversation over the phone or via WebEx related to these topics, please let me know, and I would be happy to set something up for us. I’ve also copied Kristie Jarrett on this email. Kristie is the Supervisor of our School Operations team, and is a wiz when it comes to all things enrollment reporting.
I want to reassure you that the items you’ve identified are on our high priority development list, and we’ve been working on requirements for these enhancements over the past several months. We have another meeting with the application development team today for a two hour time block, and I will be bringing your concerns up there as well. At this time, changes to our G from DegreeVerify process are scheduled to go live by mid-November. We will be communicating with our schools as we get closer to deployment, so please stay tuned.
Thank you, again, for your detailed email that very succinctly outlines the challenges you and other schools are experiencing due to the evolving compliance reporting requirements and limitations with our existing service. I look forward to working with you and your team on resolving these concerns and any others that come up along the way.
I hope you are having a wonderful morning.
Please let me know if I can be of any additional assistance.
Sean McTighe
P.S. I wanted to call out that I was unable to include Dayle Williams on this email because I could not pull his address from the chain. Please feel free to pass this along to him as well. Thank you!
From: Hall, Cassie [mailto:chall@carroll.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2016 11:04 AM
To: Amy Cecchett
Cc: Gloria Jarrett; Dannette Sullivan; Williams, Dayle
Subject: RE: Researching Student w/o mark of G
Dear Amy (and Gloria and Dannette),
Thanks again for all of your help researching these issues. Based on the file you sent us of the May 2016 graduates and their enrollment statuses, we found three additional students who were submitted with the DV file but did not get a mark of “G” on the enrollment side – X (did not have SSN… has never had one), Y (was enrolled in a future term, Summer 2016, for elective credits), and Z (another late DOB change). We have since manually updated these students on the enrollment reporting side.
This leads us to a few questions/comments –
1) When you refer to mismatching data elements in the two different databases (Enrollment and Degree Verify), are you able to provide a comprehensive list of what needs to match? We know now that DOB and SSN are important, but are there any other data elements we should be looking out for?
You are absolutely correct. The SSNs and dates of birth are the primary identifiers. At this time, students reported without an SSN on the DegreeVerify file will not create a G status on the enrollment side. Equally important for closing out program level data, your file must also include the program CIP codes. We use the CIP code on the degree file to link to the appropriate program on the enrollment side. Please note, we are also in the process of revamping our G form DegreeVerify service to also accept Student ID in combination with your school code to link the records and generate the Graduated status on the enrollment reporting side.
2) Is there an alternate way to submit our Graduates Only file that’s more reliable? Despite our internal checks, we are clearly having problems with allowing the Degree Verify file to become the Graduates Only enrollment file. Are there other institutions who submit an enrollment file at the same time as they submit their DV file to hopefully catch some of these problems? If so, would the issues we’ve been experiencing (DOB change, no SSN, enrolled in future term) be caught in the error report on the enrollment side so that we would know to go check them, or would we just find ourselves in the same place as we are now?
Yes, some schools submit a graduate only enrollment file in addition to the G from DV file. You submit this file the same way as you would submit any other enrollment file, with the exception that the standard reporting flag in the header record is set to “N”. This is a subsequent of term file that includes your students with separated statuses (including withdrawals). If you choose to go this route, at the campus level you would only report those students that graduated and are no longer enrolled. Your students who reroll into a new program after graduating from their current program would be reported as enrolled at the campus level and graduated at the program level only. (This is where the CIP code comes in handy.) The following link will provide you with some really helpful information related to reporting graduated statuses: https://studentclearinghouse.info/audit/how-to-report-graduated-status/
3) I also want to raise a larger concern for NSC I have about this whole process, which is why I’m including Gloria and Dannette on this email. Ultimately, we think it’s unacceptable that the data we are submitting and is being transmitted as part of the DV file (without errors!) is not being comprehensively moved over to marking these students with the “G” status. We understand your explanation of the two different databases, but for NSC to serve its clients better we think the company needs to work this disconnect out so that the two databases talk with one another and you can alert institutions when there are data mismatches or other problems that prevent the “G” status from being appended. Providing a generic list of what could potentially cause a problem is not the same as alerting us to the actual problems. We’re a small school and simply do not have the resources to check that every data point on every student record matches the previous enrollment submission, so we count on the NSC error reports to help flag problems… but clearly these reports are not catching a number of items that create problems. We can only imagine what large schools with thousands of graduates are experiencing, and we’re guessing that many of them aren’t even aware there’s a problem.
We absolutely agree with your assessment here, and this is why we’ve prioritized an enhancement to the existing DegreeVerify service at the top of our list. Prior to 150%, it was acceptable to report the separation statuses to the NSLDS, and the G from DegreeVerify service was able to easily meet this regulation in conjunction with our core enrollment reporting service. Since the inception of 150%, the Department of Education has continued to evolve its requirements and requested data being sent through the SSCR process. The G from DegreeVerify service’s gaps that were formerly not an issue have created challenges for our schools that we are fully committed to addressing. As we prepare to launch this enhancement, please feel free to reach out to me directly for any questions or concerns related to how to report your graduates. My recommendation at this time would be to submit your Graduated statuses in your enrollment files and rely on the G from DV process as an additional check and balance that will fill in the gaps. Once we’ve deployed our enhancement to this service, we will be sending out a communication and at that time, your school can reassess whether or not it would like to continue reporting graduated statuses in the enrollment files, or if you’d like us to generate those from your DegreeVerify file only once the logic is more lock-tight. If you choose to continue primarily leveraging our G from DV service to generate the G statuses, we can provide you with a list of specific scenarios that the logic does not currently address. These records can be updated through our online update process to ensure the G’s get sent to NSLDS appropriately.
Thank you, again, for your candid feedback. It gives credence to the priorities we’ve made, and it is an additional opportunity for us to evolve our services in order to better support you and your students. As always, please keep the suggestions coming. We sincerely look forward to continuing to collaborate with you moving forward.
Thanks in advance for answering our questions in #1 and #2, and for listening to our feedback in #3 and passing it along.
All the best,
Cassie
--
Cassie E. Hall
Registrar
Carroll College
1601 N. Benton Avenue
Helena, MT 59625-0002
Tel: (406) 447-4572 / (406) 447-5435
Email: chall@carroll.edu
Web: www.carroll.edu
Hi Dayle,
Below is some information regarding the G to DV process and what would cause a Grad Only file to not be generated from the DV file.
There are many reasons why a G status would not generate:
- If the award date is 30 days before the term end, the graduated status will be appended.
- If the award date is on/ after the term end date, the graduated status will be appended up to 120 days from the term end date.
- If the award date is on/after the term end date, the graduated status will be appended if the degree transmit date is no more than 180 days from the award date.
- If award date is after the degree file transmits date, a graduated status will not be appended.
- A graduated status will append to a calculated withdrawal record and even to school withdrawn record if the status start date is equal to the term end date.
- If a student is currently enrolled or is in a future term, a graduated status will not be appended.
- If the degree record does not have an SSN or missing matching data elements (ie: dob), a graduated status will not appended.
- The term end date of the term in which the student last attended will be the graduated status start date.
You will need to add this student’s Graduate status via an online update.
Thank you.
Amy
