Our objective was to determine whether the University of Cincinnati used the Student Aid (Assistance Listing Number (ALN) 84.425E) and Institutional (ALN 84.425F) portions of its Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) grants for allowable and intended purposes. We also reviewed the University’s cash management practices and the timeliness and quality of the data the University reported on its use of HEERF grants.
We determined that the University generally used the Student Aid ($42.1 million) and Institutional ($67.8 million) portions of its HEERF grants for allowable and intended purposes but needs to strengthen its review and documentation processes for its use of Student Aid grant funds and certain other processes to ensure compliance for its use of Institutional grant funds. We also found that the University did not fully comply with cash management and reporting requirements.
We made 10 recommendations to address the issues identified, including that the school develop and implement a process to prevent or detect payment errors when awarding emergency financial aid grants to students, develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that its award determinations, eligibility criteria, and management decisions related to eligibility for its emergency financial aid grants to students are adequately documented and supported, and that it review the allowability of repurposed Institutional expenditures and the reasonableness of the noncompetitive procurements, and if inappropriate, return to the Department or reallocate the grant of $800,000 in lost revenue and $1.9 million in noncompetitive procurements.
This is one of two reports in this series; see also our reports on Lincoln College of Technology and Remington College. You can also read about related work on our Pandemic Relief page.