A person from Admissions (DOA, Rep) are not allowed to test or grade any entrance testing.
Our company structure has this requirement built in by employing a Director of Financial Aid who works with securing funds for students, and a Director of Business Services who oversees the disbursement of funds. These departments operate independently to ensure pure separation.
We have a seperate Business Office and Financial Aid Office which handle different duties such as awarding and disbursing. We also have a Test Proctor which is a part of a department outside of Admissions. We are all able to work together for our students but the seperation of the duties if clearly defined.
Our Admissions Representatives cannot answer Financial Aid questions and vice versa. Also, we have a separate department for the awarding and disbursement of funds.
Great point, Kaelea. Since the documents make references to taxes and finances, a student may perceive someone in the FA department as qualified to offer tax advice, which would not be appropriate. Thanks for sharing your comment.
As far as enterance testing, we have a test proctor that is responsible for protoring the enterance testing, this person is not a part of the admissions team, this person reports directly to the campus president. As far as financial aid, we also have separation from the two departments and each department has their role with the student; admissions is recruiting and financial aid is providing financial aid information to the prospective students.
I agree you have to have the seperation of duties between the financial aid office and the business office. FA should not post funds and the business office should not be able to award the aid.
business office and financial aide are to separate departments. financial aide department cannot any money
One finite separation that wasn't talked about in this mod but may have been discussed in this forum (I didn't read all the way through all the comments) is the fact that Fin Aid has to know who has to complete tax docs and other specifics about taxes but we CANNOT give tax advice. Can be a very tight rope to walk.
A good example is having test proctor administer tests versus admissions staff
One that comes to mind is when students complete entrance exams. They are not administered by any one in the Admissions Department. At our campus a test proctor administers all entrance exams required for students.
Financial Aid sets up the student payments and the Business Office collects on them.
Financial Aid should only be doing the awarding of funds, and the Business Office should be the ones to disburse the funds to the students accounts.
Staff should be seprated into different departments to better serve the students. One person should not be responsable for both collecting monies and distrubting funds. Financial needs to be seprate from admissions. Education should consintrate on the teaching portion of the process to lead students to success.
The seperation of duties for FA and the Business office is the first one that comes to mind. FA awards and the BO dispurses and I believe this is an easy mistake for schools to make. There has to be defined roles for both departments to ensure complete compliance.
Details on what constitutes "independent testing" are contained within the Student Aid Handbook at the following link on page 1-7.
http://ifap.ed.gov/fsahandbook/attachments/1011FSAHbkVol1Ch1.pdf
Best practices suggest that standard admissions exams incorporate cross checks to have a different department administer and grade than those who handle the recruitment/enrollment effort.
While reading Mod 4, I had a question. The section on requirements for ATB testing states that if done by an assessment center, it must be staffed by professionally trained personnel and be independent of the admissions and financial aid process.
This does mean that a financial aid staff member should not administer the test, right? What about standard admissions exams?
Patricia - Good examples of areas where separation of duties provides cross checks.
No person should be in charge of collecting money, and recording its receipt. Business Office and Financial Aid are separate. Also the admissions process is separate from the testing department.
our set up is very similiar with the addition of the business office taking payments for registration fees, etc. ALso, Education, specifically the program that the student is enrolling in, also gives perspective students insight into how the program works and the profession itself.
