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YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
May 29, 2003
Report No. 2003-45
The following areas of concern were noted in our audit of the Department of Higher Education, State Guaranty Student Loan Program.
The
Department of Higher Education (DHE) allocates joint salary costs to its
various federal and state programs based on periodic estimates of the time
spent by employees on each program.�
Approximately 30 employees worked on more than one program and were
required to submit time sheets.� To
determine if the allocations were accurate, we compared the timesheets for 11
employees to the allocations.� Some of
the 11 employees did not prepare timesheets for some or all of the period
reviewed, though most missing timesheets were in the first six months
reviewed.� For the employees who did
prepare timesheets, the hours for loan activities differed from the estimated percentages
used to allocate the salary costs
DHE
officials indicated that some of the hours recorded as non-loan activities
pertained to financial-aid related duties, which were allowable costs of the
Family Federal Education Loan (FFEL) program.�
However, the lack of adequately detailed timesheets did not allow those
hours to be identified.
During
the year ended June 30, 2002, these 11 employees were paid salaries totaling
$386,498 of which $246,375 was allocated to the FFEL program.� Timesheets did not exist to support $104,484
of the allocated salary expenses, and $78,600 of the allocated salary expenses
exceeded the amount supported by the timesheets for the prior six months. As a
result, we question costs totaling $183,084 which is the federal share for
salary costs not supported by the timesheets.
NOTE: In 1978, the Missouri General Assembly created the
Missouri Student Loan Program (MSLP) to administer the Federal Family Education
Loan Program (FFELP) in the state of Missouri on behalf of the Coordinating
Board for Higher Education (CBHE).� The
CBHE has statutory authority to oversee the MSLP and to act as the guaranty
agency for the FFELP.� In this capacity,
the CBHE, acting through the MSLP, guarantees loans made to students by
eligible lending institutions.
During
the first state fiscal year of operations, the CBHE guaranteed $15,524,850 in
FFELP loans to 7,289 borrowers.� In
contrast, as of June 30, 2002, the cumulative volume of loans guaranteed was $4,609,869,521,
representing 1,574,443 FFELP loans.�
Included in this total is $2,208,017,476 in outstanding loans.
