Student Financial Aid Information

The Education Department has made limited progress in integrating its National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), which tracks loan and grant data and prescreens applicants for eligibility and student loan status, with other student financial aid databases that support title IV programs. Neither NSLDS nor the other systems were designed for efficient access to reliable student financial aid information. Many of the systems are incompatible and lack data standards and common identifiers. Inhibiting movement toward a fully functional, real-time, integrated system is the absence of a systems architecture--a structure for incorporating major systems development into an existing information systems environment. The Department so far has not devoted the time or the effort needed to develop such an architecture. Without a systems architecture and the ability to easily integrate its systems, the Department continues to acquire independent systems to support specific student financial aid programs--programs that cannot easily share information. Hence, the cost to develop and maintain these stand-alone systems continues to mount. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Student Financial Aid Systems: Absence of Guiding Architecture Reduces Efficiency, Ease of Use, by Joel C. Willemssen, Director of Information Resources Management Issues, before the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, House Committee on Education and the Workforce. GAO/T-AIMD-97-147, July 29 (15 pages).

GAO noted that: (1) the Department of Education has made limited progress in integrating NSLDS with the other student financial aid data systems that support title IV programs; (2) neither NSLDS nor the other systems were designed for efficient access to reliable student financial aid information; (3) many of the systems are incompatible and lack data standards and common identifiers; (4) inhibiting movement toward a fully functional, real-time, integrated system is the absence of a systems architecture--a structure for effectively incorporating major systems development into an existing information systems environment; (5) the Department to date has not devoted the time or effort necessary to develop such an architecture; hence, its past and current systems development activities have no single, guiding framework; (6) without a systems architecture and the ability to easily integrate its systems, the Department continues to acquire independent systems to support specific student financial aid programs--programs that cannot easily share information; (7) accordingly, the cost of developing and maintaining these stand-alone systems continues to mount; and (8) while developing such stand-alone systems has served immediate program needs on a limited basis, this approach undermines the goal of sharing student financial aid information across programs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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