Before Your CIE Meeting: Does Your Catalog Match Your Enrollment Agreement Word for Word?

What the Commission is checking

The application package is reviewed for internal consistency before it ever reaches the agenda. Staff compare the catalog against the catalog checklist, the enrollment agreement against its checklist, and then both against each other and against the program outlines. Any mismatch — a refund schedule stated one way in the catalog and another way in the agreement, a program length that differs by a week, a fee that appears in one document and not the other — becomes a deficiency. Deficiencies push you into another review cycle, and a cycle can cost a full meeting date. A process that should take four to six months stretches toward nine.

It doesn’t end at licensure. The same alignment is re-verified at annual site visits and at renewal. A catalog that drifted after approval is a finding, and findings compound.

Why documents drift

Nobody sets out to have two refund policies. Drift is structural. The catalog lives in a designer’s file or a Word document. The enrollment agreement is a PDF on the front desk, or a form inside a signing tool. The program outlines are in a third place. Three files, three owners, three edit histories. When tuition changes for the fall, the catalog gets updated because it is the public document. The agreement template gets updated later, or not at all. The outline was last touched at application time.

• Tuition or fees updated in the catalog but not in the enrollment agreement template.
• Refund policy reworded to satisfy an accreditor, leaving the older wording in the agreement.
• Program clock hours or weeks changed on the outline after a schedule shift, with the catalog still showing the original.
• A new start date calendar published on the website while the signed agreements reference last year’s.

Each of these is invisible day to day. Students sign, classes run, nobody compares documents. Then a commissioner, an examiner, or a complaint investigator lays them side by side.

The standard to prepare against

Treat the following as one set of facts that must be identical everywhere they appear: total program cost with every fee itemized; the refund and cancellation policy, including the statutory language your accreditor and the state require; program length in clock hours or credits and in calendar weeks; the academic calendar with start dates, holidays, and breaks; and the school’s legal name, address, and license status statement. If you can produce a single page listing those facts and then show that the catalog, the agreement, and every outline reproduce that page exactly, you are prepared.

How Atticus keeps the documents in agreement

Atticus™ does not store a catalog, an enrollment agreement, and a set of program outlines as three separate files. It stores the facts — tuition, fees, refund schedule, program hours, calendar — once, and generates every document from them. Change the refund policy in one place and the catalog, the agreement a student signs today, and the outline an examiner reads all update together. There is no second version to drift.

It also keeps the proof. Every enrollment agreement is signed inside Atticus and locked at signature together with the exact catalog version in force that day. When a commissioner or an investigator asks what a specific student agreed to on the day she enrolled, the answer is one click: her signed agreement, the catalog it referenced, and a timestamp — not a search through a filing cabinet or an email thread.

Before the meeting

Run the consistency check once, from the same source of truth, and walk into the room with documents that agree because they cannot disagree.

After the meeting

Keep them agreeing. Every future change flows through the same facts, every signed agreement is preserved with its catalog, and the annual visit stops being a reconciliation project.

A short checklist for owners

• Print the catalog, the enrollment agreement, and one program outline. Read the refund policy aloud from each. If the words differ, fix it before you submit.
• Confirm every fee on the agreement appears in the catalog with the same amount and the same name.
• Match program length in both hours and weeks, and match the start-date calendar.
• Decide who owns changes. One person, one source, every document regenerated from it.
• Keep a signed-agreement archive that records which catalog version each student signed under.

See it running on a live school — no password, no gate: open the Apex Allied Health admin →. Open a student file, read the enrollment agreement, and check the catalog version it was locked to.

This article is general guidance, not legal, financial, or accreditation advice. Regulatory requirements change and vary by accreditor, state, and program. Always confirm current rules with your accreditor, your state agency, and the federal regulations and FSA Handbook before acting.