We definitely send out mailings, as do most of the school clients we have worked with, and letters or post cards can be successful. However, I agree that more is usually needed, especially if you have seen an increase in your default rates or a drop in your repayment rates. When possible, contacting students by phone and contacting references when necessary will definitely increase the effectiveness of your efforts. We are also observing more schools building a social media presence to increase awareness of available resources.
Ashley,
Additional touch points for updating borrower information, reminders on the importance of repayment and just a general check to see if they have any questions are important to keep up on. Every interaction is beneficial in helping the student stay on tack for successful repayment.
Cheryl Kesson
Currently, it does not seem that we are doing much in the way of default prevention. At one point, we had a third party servicer that used to mail out post cards each month, but we could absolutely do more in the way of stepping in at each time and just reminding our students to make sure info is accurate and to just remind rights and responsibilities while they are still easily accessible.
Troy,
Great point- student engagement is critical but not always easy. I think it is helpful for students to see our departments working together, supporting and reinforcing each other. If faculty or admissions are dismissive of Financial Aid’s needs, then students may pick up that attitude and place less importance on exit counseling and FA appointments.
Kellee Gunderson
Their very important admission starts the process and the faculty will have the most interaction with the student so keeping the student engaged is very important.
Lisa,
In the experience of our participants, it seems that faculty’s main contribution is in getting students to the FA office. Schools where faculty pass along messages or send students to FA seem to have lower skip problems and fewer students who fail to attend optional counseling sessions. You are absolutely correct that Admissions has a more direct and active role in default prevention. One way that perhaps faculty can help is in better communication when students appear to be struggling. Perhaps other departments do not fully appreciate the challenge we face when all contact information is outdated or a student simply refuses our attempts at contact. If we are able to provide a type of exit counseling or friendly loan reminders to students in highest risk of dropping out, we can help them transition into repayment without inevitable delinquency. This can also pave the way for them to return to school when their personal situations improve. The alternative is for faculty to observe absenteeism and falling grades but take no preventative or remedial steps, in which case the student may drop out and ultimately default.
Kellee Gunderson
I believe admissions contributes more than the faculty to default prevention. Admissions realizes the cost of the programs and the amount of loans each student is probably going to end up with. I am not sure faculty really gets involved because they are not "money" people, they tend to process information as right brain thinkers. Financial aid people tend to be more left brain thinkers, I would say admissions is somewhere in the middle.
We do have quarterly meetings and default % is one topic that is discussed, however I really think faculty is not as concerned as they should be. Admissions seems to understand we can be shut down if our default % is too high.
Steps to increase involvement:
1. Faculty and admissions should take one of these on line courses just to get the general idea of default prevention and how they can be involved.
2. Have faculty sit thru an admissions interview and financial aid initial appointment so they hear the message from admissions and see the loan numbers and repayment amount from financial aid.
3. Get admissions and faculty involved by getting their ideas how we can better educate students about the importance of responsible borrowing and loan repayment.
Jason,
It’s great that you already have good ideas for improving your efforts. Meeting with students while they are still in school should make a big difference. Also, your institution can consider supplementing mailers with phone calls. While phone attempts are not always successful, contacting delinquent students personally is certainly more effective than letters alone. When we are not able to reach a student directly, we can leave messages with other members of the household, coworkers, neighbors, and friends; this helps make phone attempts more valuable.
Schools that do not have the budget for regular ongoing call attempts can target their efforts by determining which students would most benefit from limited call campaigns. Using reports from NSLDS and servicers, you can analyze the number and distribution of delinquencies for your school. One strategy would be to focus on late-stage delinquencies to prevent imminent default. An alternative strategy is to focus on students very early in delinquency when your contact information is more likely to be good and the student has not yet been intimidated by servicer collection calls.
Kellee Gunderson
Currently, we are not doing too much in the default prevention arena. We have a third party servicer that is sending out mailers each month. We can do a better job with this by being more involved and holding more counseling sessions while the students are still in the building.
Cristela,
You have a good point regarding our tendency to get caught up in the needs of our own individual departments. It is easy for us to articulate a laundry list things that admissions and faculty should be doing to help us, but it is important to be sensitive and respectful of the demands put upon them as well. It is critical that everyone understand the consequences of high default rates, because this is an issue that will negatively impact the entire school if not successfully managed. It is good, however, to demonstrate to other departments that we understand they have quotas, time and staffing constraints, and other challenges, and reiterate we are all doing our best to work as a team.
Kellee Gunderson
The faculty and admissions offices somewhat contribute to the institution's default prevention efforts. Sometimes the staff can get caught up in their own departmental needs that they put everything else on the back burner. Like stated in earlier in the readings, default prevention is a team effort. Every week our institution has a staff meeting and I think one step to increasing the faculty's involvement is bringing it up the meetings. Just to give a reminder to the entire staff so that it isn't put in the back of their mind.
Our faculty and admissions offices contribute greatly to our default prevention efforts. Faculty are always willing to let our financial aid department get class time at the beginning or end of class to meet with students or make announcements. Our admissions office supports us by ensuring that when they speak with students throughout the admissions process the students also speak with financial aid. We utilize that time to review financial aid with students and ask any questions they have. Students do their entrance counseling and MPN online on their own, but we get the opportunity to follow up with them to make sure they have a clear understanding. I think we need to provide more brochures regarding repayment posted around campus (classrooms, admissions offices, and cafeteria) to provide consistent reminders to students of their responsibilities as student loan borrowers.
I am pleased to know that involving admissions has worked for you!
When students are asked to provide personal information on the college application, it is a seamless part of the overall enrollment process. On the other hand, there is something inherently intimidating about reference collection in the context of a loan application. No one plans to default on their loans, but we all understand the subtext of references – if you are late on your payments, the collection company will contact these people. As another recent participant noted, students can be extremely reluctant to provide FA with anything beyond the absolutely required information. We must change the connotation of demographics into something positive, as your institution has with the focus on “student successâ€.
The admission team does a great job of helping with default prevention at my school. Not only do they collect references during the application process, but they also call the references with the student in the room, for verification. This way both the student and the reference know that everyone involved is concerned with the students success.
At the moment they do everything that is needed at my school to be involved with default prevention.
Brian,
I really like the way you phrased this- “taken care ofâ€. I don’t believe we have had a forum participant describe interactions with students in that manner, and I appreciate everything it implies. When students feel they are being rushed through admissions and financial aid, they form a negative opinion of school staff and are unlikely to seek us out when they have questions or need help.
Kellee Gunderson
At my job the admin reps help get REG fees and openly ask questions to see if they can help with anything. Its them get students enrolled and the student knows that they are being taken care of.
What an exciting opportunity for you! I hope that the experiences (both positive and negative) shared in these forums will help you in setting up a successful FA office and delinquency prevention initiatives.
We are still in the accreditation process and do not offer financial aid yet. As we move into that phase our Campus Director and Admissions Director are already trained in their share of the financial aid process.
Wanda,
I am happy to see this is working for you!
There are so many places student can falter throughout their education- they may choose the wrong program of study, struggle academically, face family or job pressure to give up on school, struggle with unsuccessful job interviews after graduation… these are all opportunities for us to lend them a helping hand, but it is obvious that no one department can cover so many bases. Communication and cooperation between departments and staff with different expertise and different resources is the only way to ensure student success.
Kellee Gunderson
Wanda,
It is great that you already have the support of student services, and I think that engaging your faculty will be an excellent next step. We have been told by many FA representatives that when they are allowed even a small amount of classroom time, they see results. Students who have been avoiding the FA office and students who are clueless about their FA responsibilities all benefit when faculty is involved.
If the instructors are reluctant, it will help to explain to them the consequences of cohort default rates to the school’s income and reputation as well as for the students’ long-term financial success. If they understand that your efforts are in everyone’s best interest, they may be more willing to cooperate and they may even have some great new ideas for you!
Kellee Gunderson
