Posted Date: July 01, 2016
Author: Jeff Baker, Director, Policy Liaison and Implementation, Federal Student Aid
Subject: Cash Management Electronic Announcement #2: Posting Contract Information and Providing Contract URL to the Department of Education
On October 30, 2015 we published the Program Integrity and Improvement final regulations. Among other issues, the final regulations included, at 34 CFR 668.164(e) and (f), a requirement that all institutions with either a Tier One (T1) or Tier Two (T2) arrangement post to the institution’s website any contracts or agreements establishing the T1 or T2 arrangements between the institution and a third-party servicer or financial institution, as applicable. Under the regulations, an institution must conspicuously post the entire contract or agreement, except that it may redact any provisions of the contract or agreement that, if disclosed, would compromise personal privacy, proprietary information technology, or the security of information technology or of physical facilities.
The regulations provide that the initial posting to the institution’s website must occur no later than September 1, 2016. Updates to the posting must occur within a reasonable time after a new contract or agreement is in place or if there is a substantive change to a previously posted contract or agreement.
The regulations also require institutions to provide to the Secretary the URL for the institutionally posted contract or agreement for inclusion in a Departmentally developed centralized database that will be accessible to the public. This Electronic Announcement provides information on the process that institutions must use to provide the required URL(s) to the Department.
Any institution with either a T1 or T2 arrangement must complete and submit the information that is available1 at https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/cash-management and must use the same site to submit any required updates to information previously provided. This site is now available for reporting purposes and institutions are encouraged to report the relevant information using the website as soon as practicable.
Finally, we note that the regulations, at 34 CFR 668.164(e)(2)(vii) and 668.164(f)(4)(iv), provide that no later than September 1, 2017, institutions with T1 and certain T2 arrangements must post to their websites specific information about payments or other benefits received by and from the institution and its T1 and T2 partners. Institutions must also post the number of student account holders and the mean and median fees these account holders were assessed. In subsequent communications we will be providing information on how this information must be posted by September 1, 2017, and how it will be provided to the Department.
As a final reminder, the form that institutions must use to submit their contract/agreement URLs to the Department is at https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/cash-management.
If you have any questions about the information provided in this Electronic Announcement you may contact Ashley Higgins at Ashley.Higgins@ed.gov or Nathan Arnold at Nathan.Arnold@ed.gov.
1 Note that institutions will submit information about their T1 or T2 arrangements on a webpage that is part of StudentAid.gov. Institutions may ignore the headings to other StudentAid.gov links on this webpage.