Spotlight on the Value of Guarantor Services: Loan Counseling

When Gene Pilawski holds group exit loan counseling sessions on the University of Notre Dame campus each spring for students who soon will begin repaying education loans, he uses a variety of materials from USA Funds^® to assist him.

A USA Funds exit counseling PowerPoint presentation helps him to structure his conversation with students, and each student who attends receives a packet of information including a list of credit card do’s and don’ts, a chart of sample starting salaries for certain professions and a range of monthly loan payments those salaries can support, and information about their rights and responsibilities as student loan borrowers.

“We feel that our exit counseling program is critical to starting students on the path to repaying their loans,” says Pilawski, associate director of the school’s Office of Financial Aid. “We want to make sure they have a thorough understanding of what to do after they graduate.”

USA Funds offers free resources for conducting group borrower counseling sessions through its USA Funds Connection^® Web portal for financial aid professionals.

‘So much easier’
Although Pilawski has been holding information sessions for students for years, it’s in just the last few years he’s been using materials from USA Funds to supplement the sessions. “I would have tried to create these materials on my own, but the fact that they are available makes it so much easier to administer.”

For the entrance and exit counseling required for student loan borrowers, Notre Dame uses Mapping Your Future, an online tool sponsored by a group of student loan guarantors, including USA Funds.

In addition to the required counseling for the approximately 1,400 students leaving Notre Dame each spring, Pilawski makes available the voluntary group sessions with USA Funds-provided materials.

Real world initiation
“The students thank us and tell us they have a better understanding of what’s required,” he says. “Many of our students have received a lot of help from parents and other family members in applying for loans, and this time in their lives is their initiation into the real world. We want to make sure they know their rights and responsibilities and also that they can recognize when there might be a problem.”

About three-fourths of Notre Dame’s 11,000 students receive some sort of financial aid and, of those, about half carry loans.

Pilawski says having the group exit counseling materials available allows him to dedicate his time to providing personalized attention to students. “It’s definitely a time-saver for me.”

A part of the counseling that resonates particularly well with students is the section “Find your spending leaks,” he says. The presentation uses an example of buying a $3 latte five days a week for 50 weeks a year. The total cost: $750.

“Until you do the math, you don’t realize what you’re spending. It’s an eye-opener for many students,” he says.
  
Good partnership
Having access to counseling materials to share with students is one reason why the Notre Dame Office of Financial Aid partners with USA Funds, according to Pilawski.

“The information is easy to understand, I trust the source, and I can customize each piece,” he says. “I really appreciate the fact that USA Funds makes these materials available, and I can use just the pieces that make sense for me to use.”

As the U.S. Congress considers student loan reform legislation, the nation’s guarantors, including USA Funds, are proposing to expand the services they deliver to assist borrowers in the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program. Loan counseling tools are among those services.

In addition to group counseling materials, USA Funds offers USA Funds Loan Counselor^®, a free suite of online borrower counseling programs.

USA Funds also provides an array of print and Web resources to address borrower issues in applying for student loans and managing those loans while in school, during the post-school grace period and in repayment. Among those resources are those specifically aimed at helping borrowers resolve student loan payment problems.