Awards recognize campus innovations in helping students manage education debt

USA Funds honors debt-management excellence

INDIANAPOLIS — USA Funds^®, the nation’s leading education-loan guarantor, announces the recipients of USA Funds 2006 Excellence in Debt Management awards. The third-annual awards recognize postsecondary institutions that have successfully developed and implemented effective and creative debt-management programs for their students.

The award recipients and the scholarship funds that USA Funds awarded to the winning institutions for their students are as follows:

• Best Debt-Management Program — $2,500 scholarship — Midwestern University, Downers Grove, Ill.
• First Runner-Up — $1,500 scholarship — Career Point Institute, San Antonio, Texas.
• Second Runner-Up — $1,000 scholarship — Remington College-Tempe Campus, Tempe, Ariz.

“Through programs that focus on helping students to minimize debt while in school, manage that debt following graduation, and repay the loans that financed their education, these award-winning schools are making a difference in the lives of their students,” said Denise B. Feser, USA Funds vice president, customer relations. “USA Funds is pleased to recognize these schools’ accomplishments and share their creative practices.”

Midwestern University is a private school serving 1,800 graduate and professional students in seven health-professions programs. Many students carry large education-debt loads, but a debt-management effort featuring the USA Funds Life Skills^® financial-literacy program has helped students keep debt levels manageable. The student financial services office works with other campus departments to incorporate debt-management sessions into existing programming. Students visit with the student financial services staff at least five times during the students’ time at the school. Required sessions coincide with admissions interviews, orientation and exit counseling. Students entering their rotations attend financial-literacy sessions and receive customized information about their own levels of student debt.

Career Point Institute is a private career college with an enrollment of 1,100. Many of the school’s students face challenges that can make repaying education loans difficult. Through a comprehensive default-prevention program, however, Career Point Institute lowered its default rate from a draft rate of nearly 25 percent for the 2004 cohort to a projected rate of less than 10 percent for the 2005 cohort. The school’s debt-management initiative ranges from offering student support that starts prior to a student’s acceptance to Career Point, to providing USA Funds Life Skills training, to offering incentives for faculty and staff to advance student-retention efforts. Additionally, the school manages contact with borrowers and monitors its default rate through USA Funds Debt Manager^®, an online tool that helps postsecondary institutions stay in touch with their borrowers to promote successful loan repayment.

Remington College-Tempe Campus is a private career college with 650 students. A debt-management program that focuses on USA Funds Life Skills has helped the school cut its default rate in half as the school’s enrollment increased by 25 percent. The school’s own award-winning “Ramp-Up Financial Literacy 101” class helps prepare students for topics covered in greater depth in the USA Funds Life Skills training, and the financial-aid office offers additional financial-literacy workshops. A three-credit-hour class features the five undergraduate-student modules of USA Funds Life Skills.

Summaries of the award-winning programs are available from the USA Funds Web site.