USA Funds Debt Manager Saves Time, Gets Results for ITT Technical Institute

Before ITT Technical Institute in San Bernardino started using USA Funds Debt Manager^® it took one staff member one-and-one-half weeks to create and send out letters each month to students who were delinquent on their education loans.

Today the California school programs USA Funds Debt Manager to run the letters on the weekend, the financial-aid administrators sign them when they arrive at work on Monday, and the letters go out in the mail.

The result: The staff member has been able to spend more time with students advising them on financial-aid issues and packaging their awards in addition to maintaining the office’s default-prevention activities. And the school’s cohort-default rate, which was 10.6 percent two years ago when ITT started using USA Funds Debt Manager, has started to decline. ITT’s 2004 final cohort-default rate was 8.7 percent.

USA Funds Debt Manager is a comprehensive Web-based communication tool that makes it easy for postsecondary institutions to stay in contact with student-loan borrowers to promote successful loan repayment and prevent past-due loans and defaults.

“Using USA Funds Debt Manager saves us a tremendous amount of time,” says Michael Hauser, ITT Technical Institute’s finance director. “Plus, we’re getting more of a response. The students are calling in.”

ITT Technical Institute is part of a private college system of 85 colleges in 30 states nationwide run by ITT Educational Services. ITT focuses on technology-oriented programs of study and offers a variety of associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The San Bernardino campus, one of 13 in California, has about 1,200 students. Half of the students are just out of high school and half are nontraditional students returning to school. Nearly all use some sort of financial aid.

Hauser says the school uses USA Funds Debt Manager to send letters to students who are 60 days, 90 days and 120 days delinquent on their federal education loans, and it has recently started communicating with students about their private loans. The students receive letters from the financial-aid administrators to whom they were assigned while on campus based on students’ last names. Hauser says he hopes the familiarity will lead the students to pick up the phone and call.

“We tell students, ‘We think you might be heading toward trouble, and we’re here to point you in the right direction to get you out of trouble,’” he says. “We always ask, ‘What can we do to help you?’”

Many times the staff members will send information about deferment, forbearance and consolidation to let students know about their repayment options.

Hauser says he particularly likes the automation of USA Funds Debt Manager. “We can decide we want to send letters to a specific group of borrowers, put the parameters in the system, run the letters during our off time, and then all we have to do is send them out.

“Default prevention is a whole-department process,” Hauser says, “and USA Funds Debt Manager gives us the opportunity to easily start the conversations with students.”