Garden City Community College Puts USA Funds Debt-Management Products, Services to Good Use

Garden City Community College has made the most of USA Funds^®’ debt-management products and services — and it’s paying off.

According to Lesa Gilbert, financial-aid adviser at the Garden City, Kan., school, the college piloted USA Funds Life Skills^®, a financial-literacy program, four years ago. The school also piloted Default Management System, a PC-based software that tracks borrower and loan information, three years ago. The latest report shows the college’s default rate declined to 8.4 percent from the previous year’s rate of 11.9 percent.

Implementing in college-skills class
Gilbert uses USA Funds Life Skills in a mandatory freshman-orientation class called College Skills. The one-credit-hour class lasts eight weeks. Within the financial-aid session, Gilbert focuses on budgeting, student-loan repayment, deferment, forbearance and default information from the following USA Funds Life Skills modules:

• Module 1, “Get a Grip on Your Finances: Smart Spending for Students.”
• Module 2, “Seek out Financial Aid: Funding Resources and Financial Obligations.”
• Module 4, “Take Control of Your Future: Finishing School and Repaying Your Loans.”

Gilbert teamed up with one of the College Skills core instructors, Frankey Schmidt, to do a pilot program three years ago. Based on students’ positive feedback — gathered through surveys — Gilbert and Schmidt believe USA Funds Life Skills is beneficial and has a positive impact on the students.

“Our goal is to provide consistent information on budgeting and financial aid,” Gilbert says. “It’s also important that students have materials they can continue to use after leaving the classroom.”

Simplifying borrower communications
Gilbert explained that DMS reduced the number of hours required to prepare communications to student-loan borrowers, compared with manually producing letters.

“DMS tracked our communication with students,” Gilbert says. “Having that kind of history has been very beneficial.”

Garden City Community College recently has moved to USA Funds Debt Manager^SM  from DMS. USA Funds Debt Manager is a new Web-based tool that makes it easy for postsecondary institutions to stay in contact with borrowers to promote successful loan repayment and combat loan defaults. Using USA Funds Debt Manager, Gilbert can design her own strategies for contacting borrowers by mail or by telephone.

This is the school’s first month to use USA Funds Debt Manager, but already Gilbert recognizes the enhancements. She customizes the letters already provided in the tool. In USA Funds Debt Manager, she can select which borrower groups to contact, and determine when and how to contact them. By targeting communications to specific borrower groups, she can maximize the impact of her communications to help former students avoid the additional costs of late payments and loan default.
“I have immediate access to more-current information, which is updated weekly through USA Funds Debt Manager,” Gilbert explains.

Getting student-retention help
Gilbert learned about USA Funds Debt Manager during a recent in-service day on campus. The college invited Carol Buchli and Carole Ann Simpson, USA Funds Services debt-management consultants, to conduct an in-service-day presentation for faculty and staff about retention and its impact on cohort-default rates. Brent Carpenter, USA Funds sales representative, and Valerie Walthall, USA Funds customer-relations manager, assisted with the presentation.

“This was the first time we had done anything like this on campus,” Gilbert says. “Our faculty and staff weren’t aware of how much retention impacts the cohort-default rate.

Although the college has a retention plan in place, its Strategic Enrollment Committee will use information from retention exercises conducted during the in-service day to make changes in retention policies. Reaction to the presentation was so positive that the college plans a follow-up presentation for another in-service day. The school will ask USA Funds representatives to review the committee’s implementation of the tips gathered from the exercises.

“I appreciate the extra effort Carol Buchli puts in to help us with our debt-management initiatives,” says Gilbert. “Her assistance is invaluable. She’s informative, and she lets me know what USA Funds has available to assist me, as well as the college. Whenever I need anything, she’s there for me.”

To learn more about boosting student retention, thereby reducing loan defaults, visit the USA Funds online resource “Solving the Retention Puzzle.” If you would like help in developing a retention plan for your campus, or more information about USA Funds Life Skills or USA Funds Debt Manager, contact your debt-management consultant.