Roxbury Community College failed to document all the financial aid it provides to students, repay the US Department of Education unused money for Pell grants, and reconcile its books with state regulators, according to a long-awaited state audit released yesterday.

In one of the most glaring findings, auditors said an internal review at the college found 54 percent of financial aid files to be ''problematic,'' with many files missing necessary documents.

The findings, based on a review of records from the 2000-2001 academic year, largely confirmed a draft audit released by the state last fall. That was one of a series of critical reports on the school's recordkeeping and management that led to the resignation of President Grace C. Brown.

But State Auditor Joe DeNucci sounded a note of optimism yesterday. Although the school has a way to go, he said, it is becoming more transparent and accountable under its new administration. Last month state officials named Randolph Bromery, a former chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to serve as interim head of RCC.

''I am encouraged by the positive response and the new spirit of cooperation of the administration,'' DeNucci said.

In August, DeNucci's auditors suspended an audit of Roxbury after calling its books ''unauditable'' due to an uncooperative school administration and disorganized recordkeeping. They found documents such as academic transcripts and high-school diplomas missing from the files of some 2,000 students at Roxbury who receive $3.5 million in federal loans and need-based Pell grants.

In late October, shortly before Brown resigned, auditors resumed their efforts to reconcile the college's records. As they did before suspending the audit over the summer, auditors selected 25 student financial aid files at random and found them ''more complete'' than the previous sample.

Still, the auditors found two students in the sample should not have received financial aid; one did not meet academic requirements, and the other was not in a degree-granting program.

After internal reviews and investigations by outside consultants, auditors said, Roxbury owes the Education Department and the state more than $680,000 in either misused or unused financial aid.

College officials did not return calls yesterday for comment.

In statements included in the audit, Roxbury officials said new computer software would make it easier to monitor everything from a student's academic progress to how much money a student gets.

The previous administration contended that computer problems hampered its accounting. While auditors agreed, they said the school's financial woes are more a result of turnover in the financial aid office, little oversight, and poor management.

The audit released yesterday is the second of three audits targeting the college. The first, released in November by the state comptroller's office, found RCC failed to send students tuition bills for the 1999-2000 academic year until last June and that the college used checkbooks rather than computers to track its $11.2 million state budget. The third audit, due later this year, is a more comprehensive review of the college's financial, student, and academic operations.

Auditors yesterday called on Roxbury officials to comply with an administrative law judge's ruling that the college repay more than $200,000 to the Department of Education for awarding financial aid to ineligible students in its English as a Second Language program.

The audit also found the college lacks an adequate system for identifying students who drop out of school without officially withdrawing and an accounting process that reconciles all unused state appropriations.

''This is what we expected,'' said Stephen Tocco, chairman of the state Board of Higher Education. ''But the good news is that the transition with the new administration is turning the college in the right direction. We have to continue to work at these problems to make sure they go away completely.''

Boston Globe

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2002