Financial aid offices, more than any other administrative office on a college campus, have been forced to use technology via external agencies. Federal student aid programs, as well as many state programs, can now only be administered by linking to external databases, such as the Federal Central Processing System (CPS) and the Pell Grant payment system.
Many financial aid offices, however, have gone well beyond these basic requirements to streamline operations and improve service to students through creative use of technology. In this article, we will highlight "best practice" use of technology in three very different aid office settings.
At Iowa State University, a home grown student system has been creatively enhanced to allow the university to administer almost $300 million in financial aid to over 12,000 students with only 12 professional, eight clerical, and nine FTE of student staff. In addition, Roberta Johnson, interim director of the office of student financial aid, provides the following examples of recent technological enhancements designed to improve service to students.
"Automated identification of students selected for verification, with an e-mail automatically sent requesting documentation; follow-up e-mails to students on a monthly basis regarding outstanding documentation
Automated packaging of all financial aid awards with e-mail notification to students to view the award on a secure server
Links from the electronic award letter to appropriate electronic note sites for Stafford, PLUS, and alternative loan borrowing
Implementation of third party access to Iowa State University's secure server so parents can view financial aid awards, bills, grades, and so on (at the student's discretion)
Implementation of an online student employment system that allows students appropriate access to both work study and non work study positions, and development of an electronic employment verification form which allows campus employers to input information regarding student hires which feeds directly into the university's payroll system. (This has eliminated work for the Office of Student Financial Aid, departmental payroll clerks, and the University payroll office.)
Reconciliation reports that once
took weeks to complete, can now
be run in less than 60 seconds.
Development of an online scholarship system to streamline in-house scholarship applications and selections and an electronic check processing system to efficiently process scholarship checks from outside donors with automatic posting of the funds to student accounts in the business office.
Clearly these initiatives have made critical aid processes easier for both students and office staff and have provided a means of communicating more effectively with both students and parents.
At Hobart and William Smith Colleges (N.Y.), the College Board financial aid product PowerFAIDS has been used to significantly reduce the time and resources involved in "back end" processing. As Samantha Veeder, director of Financial Aid for the colleges, explains:
"For example, a few years ago when we automated the disbursement of both loan funds and state grants, the ease of reconciliation and the decrease in the burden of completing those tasks provided a significant return on investment. Instead of spending literally weeks reconciling over $10 million with the business office, the financial aid office can now run a report in less than 60 seconds to find discrepancies in disbursement amounts. Furthermore, data entry errors have been virtually eliminated. As a result, we immediately saw improvements to customer service and 'front end' processing."
Most recently, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, like Iowa State University, have increased electronic communications to students and reduced the number of paper letters sent. The colleges have also launched web access that enables students to review awards, missing documents, and loan statuses, any time, any day.
As Veeder notes, "We have seen a considerable decrease in walk-in traffic and telephone calls from students and only a slight increase in e-mail requests since we have empowered students to use the web tool to answer their own questions."
