USA Funds provides record levels of support to education access

Nation's leading education-loan guarantor issues 2002 annual report

USA Funds provides record levels of support to education access

INDIANAPOLIS — USA Funds^®, the nation’s leading education-loan guarantor, reported that it delivered record levels of service in support of education access during 2002. In releasing USA Funds' 2002 annual report, Carl C. Dalstrom, USA Funds president and CEO, said, "We expanded and enhanced services to our constituents — students and parents, schools, education lenders, our designated states, and federal taxpayers — to help families prepare and pay for higher education."

Among the accomplishments highlighted in USA Funds' annual report are the following:

USA Funds guaranteed nearly $13.9 billion in Federal Stafford, PLUS and Consolidation loans to help parents and students pay higher-education expenses. This volume represents an increase of nearly $3.8 billion from the previous year in the financial-aid dollars supported by USA Funds' guarantee.
Default-prevention efforts undertaken on behalf of USA Funds helped prevent $10.7 billion in potential education-loan defaults by successfully restoring to repayment nearly 93 percent of seriously past-due accounts. These efforts drove USA Funds' annual default rate to below 2 percent.
USA Funds recovered nearly $1.1 billion from borrowers who had previously defaulted on their loans — marking the third consecutive year during which USA Funds has recovered more than $1 billion on loan defaults. USA Funds remitted to the federal government an average of 82.4 cents of every dollar collected.
USA Funds introduced Life Skills^SM, its financial-literacy program for college students. The program helps postsecondary institutions teach their students how to manage time and money wisely, while they attend school and following graduation. Nearly 300 schools nationwide are at various stages of implementing Life Skills.
USA Funds expanded its support for need-based student aid by awarding $3.7 million in scholarships to 2,519 students through its Access to Education Scholarships™. USA Funds contributed additional dollars to its scholarship fund to support future renewal awards for these first-time scholarship recipients. USA Funds provided an additional $1.4 million in support to other scholarship programs.
USA Funds increased its investment in the research and development of new and enhanced education-loan services. USA Funds provided support to initiatives such as electronic signatures; OpenNet, which will offer a single Web-based platform to exchange loan-file data with any lender, guarantor or servicer; an ELMNet interface for loans disbursed through the Lender Funds Management (LFM) system; and the Meteor Project, which eventually will provide open, nonproprietary, real-time access to all of a student's available aid information.
To promote access to education in the eight states that it serves as designated guarantor, USA Funds launched state-specific, college-planning Web sites in five states, co-funded College Goal Sunday programs in five states, and provided a variety of support to other higher-education access initiatives.

During 2003, USA Funds will introduce Unlock the Future^™, an early-awareness program for middle-school students and their parents. USA Funds also will develop a version of its Life Skills financial-literacy program for graduate and professional students. The nation's leading guarantor will offer software to schools to help them contact borrowers who have fallen behind in their education loan payments, and will help inform the policy discussion for the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. "We will continue to invest in services and programs that help students and families overcome barriers to higher education," Dalstrom said.