USA Funds School-Customer Profile: Harding University
Harding University in Searcy, Ark., is a “Campus of Character” — so it’s fitting that its financial-aid office takes a hands-on approach to working with former students to ensure successful education-loan repayment.
Loan Counselor Judy Cuellar hand-addresses and hand-signs each letter sent to students who are experiencing repayment difficulties. USA Funds Debt Manager® generates the communications, and Cuellar takes the time to note in her own writing options that each student might pursue, based on that student’s specific circumstances, to get back on track. She follows this process for each of the letters she sends each week, which sometimes can be more than 30.
“Hand-addressing and hand-signing the letters lets them know there’s someone who cares,” says Cuellar.
Harding received its “Campus of Character” designation from the International Association of Character Cities, the first such honor that the group awarded. The school aims to take a leadership role in demonstrating the importance of good character with students and in the community. Earlier this year, the Corporation for National and Community Service named Harding to the first-ever President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, honoring the school’s focus on servant-leadership.
A private, liberal-arts school, Harding offers its 6,100 students bachelor’s and master’s degrees in disciplines ranging from business administration, to counseling, to fine arts. Created in 1924, the school’s mission is to “provide a quality education that will lead to an understanding and philosophy of life consistent with Christian ideals.”
Traditional students, traditional needs
The student population is largely traditional-age, says Jon Roberts, Harding University director of student financial services and a member of the USA Funds® Default-Prevention Council. The students are traditional in another way as well, he says.
“Unfortunately, the nature of the beast is that the financial-aid office typically is not a popular place to visit for college students,” Roberts says. “Students don’t come to school because of the excellent financial-aid services. Paying the bill is a barrier to getting what they want, so we want to put up as few barriers as possible to their getting what they want.”
Making the financial-aid process as easy as possible for Harding students means providing a personal touch, Cuellar and Roberts says, but with the assistance of technology.
The office provides loan counseling online, using USA Funds Stafford Loan GuideSM for entrance counseling and serving as a pilot school for the new online exit-counseling tool USA Funds Student Loan Transition GuideSM.
“USA Funds Stafford Loan Guide has been a phenomenal success,” Roberts says. “It gives us the out-of-the-box functionality we were looking for.”
Harding requires freshmen to complete USA Funds Life Skills® financial-literacy training geared toward entering students, after they complete entrance counseling. Students who complete exit counseling also must take part in a USA Funds Life Skills session.
Cohort-default-rate success
The extensive use of USA Funds’ products and services has netted positive results for Harding and its students.
The USA Funds Debt Manager letters that Cuellar sends have led to many responses from borrowers seeking to “fix what’s broken,” Cuellar says. Coupled with the school’s overall focus on first-year retention, an increase in loan consolidation and “really good students,” Cuellar says, USA Funds Debt Manager has helped lead the school to a draft cohort-default rate of 1.2 percent for 2005. That rate would represent a 56-percent decrease from the school’s 2004 cohort rate and would easily meet the financial-aid staff’s goal of lowering the rate to less than 2 percent.
“USA Funds Debt Manager is a great example of how we try to leverage technology to make the financial-aid experience more pleasant for students,” Roberts says.