State Audit Finds Issues With Asset Management In Office Of Higher Education

by Jamil Ragland

A recent audit of the Office of Higher Education (OHE) found that the office continues to have issues with asset management, among other new problems that appeared during the state auditors’ investigation.

In a 17-page report released Tuesday that covers the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the state Auditors of Public Accounts found four areas of deficiency, including untimely purchase orders, incomplete telecommuting agreements, and accepting late payments from private career schools without consequence. These three issues were new problems for OHE.

The fourth area is a repeat finding in relation to asset management. State law requires agencies to maintain a software library to tag, record, and maintain their capital assets and controllable property, as well as submit an annual asset management report, known as a CO-59 form, to the state Comptroller’s office.

The auditor’s report found that OHE did not accurately or promptly complete its CO-59 form for fiscal year 2023, due to neglecting to carry forward the prior year’s balance of $30,650. There were also discrepancies between OHE’s internal asset records and the assets listed in CORE-CT, the state’s asset tracking system. OHE did not list 68 assets, totaling $94,018, from its internal listing in Core-CT and 51 other assets in Core-CT, totaling $56,203, that were not

included in the OHE internal listing. And 89 of the assets in the Core-CT records did not contain important information such as asset cost.

The auditors noted that this same issue had been found in the four previous audits of OHE, dating back to 2012. It blamed inadequate internal controls and a lack of management oversight for the problems. 

OHE agreed with the findings, and pledged to standardize the process for completing CO-59 forms, review and reconcile all records to ensure accuracy, and establish a system for properly tagging capital and controllable assets.

Another area of concern in the auditor’s report dealt with the collection of fees from private career schools such as commercial driving schools, cosmetology schools, and private medical programs. These schools are required by state law to pay four tenths of one percent of the tuition they receive per calendar quarter to the State Treasurer. If a school fails to pay within 30 days of the due date, it is supposed to lose its certificate of authorization.

There were 16 instances of late quarterly payments, ranging from one month late to two years late. The outstanding fees totaled $3,781, and OHE could not produce evidence that it had told the schools about the violations.

While OHE agreed with the finding, it did offer an explanation for the problems with collecting funds. 

“In 2022, OHE moved from a system that was a combination of an Access database and paper applications to an online system called Veoci that captured entire workflows within Academic Affairs, including private career schools and the quarterly payments,” the office said in a statement to auditors. “Later that same year, OHE also moved from collecting checks as payment to doing electronic payments.”

OHE pledged to offer additional training to staff, adjust to the new database, and institute internal auditing to correct the problems.

OHE has made progress since its audits in the past. With the exception of the property tracking issue, the office has corrected the problems that the last auditors’ report found, including efficiently procuring personal services, ensure employee separation payments are accurate and timely, and terminate CORE-CT access for employees who leave state service.