The U.S. Department of Education has recently released a list of more than 550 colleges that will have to undergo “heightened cash monitoring” because of concerns about their management of federal financial aid.
Being on “heightened cash monitoring” requires the schools to operate under restrictive conditions and extra scrutiny — and is meant to serve as warning to students.
More than half of the colleges on the list are for-profit schools, which include beauty and healthcare training institutes. Also included on the list are small religious colleges, both private and public colleges, and a few foreign schools. Only eight North Carolina colleges made it onto the list.
Out of the 556 schools on the list, only 69 are required to face the most intense punishment of “heightened case monitoring level two," or HCM-2.
The 69 institutions on HCM-2 include six public universities, 18 private nonprofit schools, 39 for-profit colleges and six international universities.
Schools on HCM-2 must finance students' aid themselves and then apply for compensation from the federal government.
Institutions that are only facing HCM-1 are allowed to receive the federal money they expect to pay out before they actually award it.
The list is meant to bring further transparency to the financial actions of schools. Many institutions are on the list because they failed to pass their financial-responsibility test, they have problems with their accreditor or they are under investigation by an independent section of the U.S Department of Education.
state@dailytarheel.com
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