International Academy of Design and Technology is a private, four-year college with a dozen campuses in the United States and Canada. The Tampa, Fla., campus serves approximately 2,700 students. IADT Tampa offers degree programs in graphic design, computer animation, digital production, digital photography, fashion design and marketing, interior design, media-design management, merchandising, recording arts, and animation, game and virtual-space studies.
Programs
Since mid-2006 staff members at IADT Tampa have been responsible for the debt-management programs of all branch campuses as well. These responsibilities include providing ongoing training on all default-management updates, updating all campuses on financial-literacy programming, and contacting all students during their grace periods to remind them of the beginning of student-loan repayment. Tampa-campus staff members also manage data-collection systems to track and analyze students who become past-due in their loan payments or default on their student loans.
Erma Ruiz, IADT default manager, meets every quarter with new students for presentations of USA Funds®’ financial-literacy program, USA Funds Life Skills®. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining good credit and ensuring that students develop realistic budgets.
Using USA Funds Life Skills, Ruiz also conducts exit presentations for graduates and students who have withdrawn. These presentations focus on budgets, expected income, loan-repayment options and the advantages and disadvantages of loan consolidation.
Ruiz and her staff also contact all students during their grace periods to remind them of their upcoming first student-loan payments and to answer any questions regarding changing their repayment options.
IADT also uses USA Funds Debt Manager® to contact borrowers during their grace periods, at the end of deferment and forbearance periods, and when borrowers fall behind in their loan payments. IADT staff members also use the Web site www.myspace.com to locate borrowers who have not responded to the school’s telephone calls or e-mail messages.
Results
IADT’s borrower-contact efforts using USA Funds Debt Manager resolve an average of 50 loan delinquencies every week. In addition, Ruiz reports that the school’s draft 2005 cohort-default rate fell to 9 percent from the 10.3-percent final rate for 2004. Ruiz projects the school’s 2006 rate will decline to below 8 percent.
“Our students understand their financial obligations because we have armed them and educated them with the information they need to be successful from the time they begin school,” Ruiz said.