Truckee Meadows Community College Credits USA Funds for Default-Rate Success

When Debra Buringrud received her school’s 2005 cohort-default rate a few weeks ago, she was thrilled to see a nearly 23-percent drop — one she attributes to using default-prevention tools from USA Funds^®.

Buringrud, the student-loan coordinator in the financial-aid office of Truckee Meadows Community College, started using USA Funds Debt Manager^® two years ago to communicate with student-borrowers after they left school.

“It has really made a difference,” she says. The college’s 2005 cohort-default rate dropped to 9.5 percent from 12.3 percent for the 2004 cohort.

USA Funds Debt Manager is a Web-based communications tool that helps financial-aid administrators connect with borrowers and prevent student-loan defaults.

Offering help
Buringrud uses USA Funds Debt Manager to send letters and e-mail messages to student-borrowers who are delinquent on their loan payments. Each month students who are delinquent get one letter and one e-mail message in the same week.

“I use the e-mail message to reinforce the information in the letter,” she says, noting that the message is very short and offers help and her contact information. Through the letters, borrowers learn information such as Web sites they can use to find forms, and other tools that can help them.

She sends 50-to-120 letters each month, and she says the response has been good. Students call or send her e-mail messages asking her for their lenders’ phone numbers or how to find deferment and forbearance forms.

It takes about 20 minutes each week to download, print and sign letters, and send the e-mail messages. A student-employee in Buringrud’s office stuffs and mails all the letters.

“USA Funds Debt Manager is so easy to use. Everything is all set up, so all you have to do is print and sign the letters and send them,” she says.

About 12,000 students attend the Reno, Nev.-based community college, and about one-third use some sort of financial aid.

“USA Funds Debt Manager gives me peace of mind because I know that I’m actually communicating with these students and doing my part to help them,” Buringrud says.

Saving time
This year Buringrud also used a cohort-analysis tool from USA Funds to review the default data from the U.S. Department of Education. USA Funds currently is piloting the tool, which analyzes the data for potential errors, and pinpoints student-loan accounts that may require review.

Buringrud programs the cohort-analysis tool to double-check time lines such as when a student’s grace period began and ended and when the student entered repayment. If the tool finds a discrepancy, Buringrud knows she must review the account information to make sure the data is accurate. If her research shows the account belongs in another cohort period, that information can affect the school’s default rate for that cohort.

“I don’t have the time to manually research all the accounts in one cohort,” she says, noting that the 2005 cohort had 589 accounts. “This tool highlights the 10 or 15 accounts I should review. It’s marvelous.”

Buringrud says she’ll keep working to lower Truckee Meadows’ cohort-default rate even more. “We always want the rate to be lower. The default rate represents people in trouble, and we don’t want to see that.”