Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund Reporting Requirements | U.S. Department of Education OIG

Summary

Inspection report I20DC0013, dated February 26, 2021, on whether selected institutions receiving funds under the Institutional Portion of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) met public reporting requirements and how they reported using the money. The inspection found that 81 of the 100 institutions reviewed complied with the CARES Act Institutional Portion reporting requirements. Reports could not be located on the websites of 19 of the 100 institutions, which had drawn down over $5.5 million of almost $29 million awarded to them as of September 30, 2020. The OIG made one suggestion that the Department review anomalies in awards and recipient identifiers and take corrective action as warranted.

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Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund Reporting Requirements

Report Information

Date Issued

February 26, 2021

Report Number

I20DC0013

What We Did

The objective of our inspection was to determine (1) whether selected institutions receiving funds under the Institutional Portion of Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) met public reporting requirements and (2) the reported usage of the Institutional Portion of HEERF by selected institutions.

What We Found

Our inspection found that 81 of the 100 institutions included in our review complied with Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) Institutional Portion reporting requirements. We noted that 80 of the institutions posted reports on their websites; however, we were unable to locate Institutional Portion reports anywhere on the websites associated with 19 of the 100 institutions. These 19 institutions had drawn down over $5.5 million out of almost $29 million awarded to these institutions under the Institutional Portion of HEERF as of September 30, 2020.

What We Recommend

We made one suggestion specific to anomalies we noted regarding awards and recipient identifiers that we brought to the Department’s attention, and suggested they review the anomalies and take corrective action as warranted.

Management Challenge Area

Implementing Pandemic Relief Laws

Related Work Products

This is one of several reports the OIG has issued involving HEERF. See related reports on our Pandemic Relief page .

View report on Oversight.gov

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