Overview of Assessment and Programmatic Change

Financial Aid Office

Situation: In 1989-90, the Financial Aid Office had a computer network composed of three work stations that could not share the information available in the office's primary database and administrative software – the College Scholarship Service Software Services product called MicroFAIDS. This situation left primary data input responsibilities for the database to the director, as the person who had to use the database to determine need and package awards for aid recipients, and the other two staff members without access to the database and the benefits of its automation features.

Rationale for change: A networked version of MicroFAIDS would permit staff to work from a single, up-to-date database and to use all of its built-in automation features, with a division of computing responsibilities according to each staff member's administrative responsibilities. (For example, the administrative assistant could record receipt of documents and transmit tracking letters based upon that, and transmit award letters directly from MicroFAIDS, rather than from a word processing document on her Macintosh).

Result: The director obtained authorization for the necessary hardware and software purchases and the system was installed in 1990-91. The benefits of this initiative quickly bore fruit. In addition to the document tracking and letter generation functions, other automation benefits included processing disbursements electronically (instead of requiring duplicative data input by the Business Office), and rapid, consistent award packaging via pre-programmed formulas. With these automated functions in place, staff members were able to spend more time counseling students and their families, and less time shuffling paper and doing data input.

Situation: In the spring of 1990, anecdotal comments from families of financial aid applicants led the director to conclude that the College's need-based packaging model and merit scholarship programs were not competitive with those of our primary overlap schools.

Rationale for Change: Strategic as well as political concerns argued for a comparison of the College's financial aid (need as well as merit) policies and practices. The question was, did the College's "self-help first" need-aid packaging formula and relative lack of merit scholarships put it at a competitive disadvantage with its peers. With a new president and a new director of admissions taking charge, and a financial aid director relatively new to the field and the College (16 months in office), it seemed an appropriate juncture to review these issues. The director suggested that the College hire Noel Levitz, an enrollment-management consultant, to conduct an audit of aid policies and practices.

Result: Noel Levitz conducted its audit and presented its recommendations to the College. Among those were to:

• Increase the percentage of the E&G budget devoted to financial aid to 20 percent (from 14 percent in 1992-93) (in stepped increases, approved by the Board of Directors);
• Increase the visibility of the College's financial aid programs to prospective students by emphasizing its availability through an attention-getting marketing publication earlier in Admissions' mail flow (adopted);
• Institute a yield scholarship, to enroll more students whose family income precludes need-aid eligibility (adopted) and therefore decreases the likelihood of enrollment;
• Institute an "early estimator" to qualify families for assistance in the prospect stage, to increase the size of the applicant pool; and
• Implement an equity-packaging model for need-based aid targeted at the most academically qualified students (adopted).

The equity-packaging model, the early estimator, and the yield scholarship were adopted beginning with the class entering in 1992-93 ('96). Seeing its total full-time enrollment dropping near the 500 mark in the late 1980s, the College saw the size and quality of its student body improve modestly through the mid-1990s.

Situation: In the mid-1990s, with financial aid spending increasing dramatically, it became apparent that there was a need for a mechanism to control financial aid spending without sacrificing the modest enrollment gains the College had enjoyed since the enrollment up-tick began in the early '90s.

Rationale for Change: The concept uses net revenue – revenue realized after institutional financial aid expenditures are counted – as the yardstick for financial aid budget planning. The process employs a planning matrix to measure applicants' academic ability and relative financial need, and to assign institutional gift dollars accordingly. Lacking the in-house expertise to devise what is a rather complex tool, and seeking general intelligence about competitors' methods, the College again hired Noel Levitz, in the fall of 1995, to provide the data manipulation and statistical analysis for the planning process.

Result: The size of incoming classes has varied significantly since the College began using the planning matrix. The annual goals for aggregate net revenue have been met twice in five planning cycles; the goals for average net revenue per student, three times (see the shaded cells in the table). The table displays the results for the planning cycles (school year in which recruiting occurred) 1995-96 through 1999-2000 (source: Enrollment and Revenue Management System Reports, Financial Aid Office records):

Situation: The Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), formerly known as the Federal Guaranteed Student Loan Program, has been plagued throughout its history by complex regulations and procedures that make it challenging for students and their families to use and difficult for colleges to administer. Under the program, loans are certified by college financial aid offices, the loan capital is provided by private lenders (banks, credits unions), and guarantee agencies compensate private lenders for loans on which borrowers default. Under regulations and procedures in effect through the 1992-93 school year, Financial Aid used a total of nine different types of documents to determine student eligibility, certify and disburse loans, and certify student enrollment to lenders and guarantors. This involved exchanging information with scores of lenders and guarantee agencies.

In 1993, the Clinton administration and the Congress established a competing program, the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, in which colleges originate and manage loans, and the federal government itself provides the loan capital through the sale of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Rationale for Change: Rather than risk using an untested federal loan program overseen by a Department of Education with a deserved reputation for incompetence, the director chose to take every possible step to simplify FFELP administration insofar as procedures within the College's discretion would allow. The aim was to minimize paper, speed up application processing and disbursement, and make the process transparent and easy to use for students and their families.

Result: In the summer of 1994, the director initiated the following steps:

• Chose a single, preferred lender offering attractive incentives to borrowers (interest discounts for good repayment performance);
• Started using loan-certification software that permitted electronic processing of applications and gave promissory-note distribution and -collection responsibilities to the College's primary loan guarantor (which handled 90 percent of the College's loan volume);
• Established with that same guarantor an electronic funds transfer mechanism to disburse loans electronically; and
• Subcontracted student-enrollment verification reporting to the National Student Loan Clearinghouse through the submission of electronic rosters from the Registrar's Office database.

The result was a marked speed-up in application processing and the elimination of all paper but the promissory note itself and one associated form. However, communication problems among the four players (students, College, lender, guarantee agency) persisted, and there was still the problem of not knowing exactly where the loans were in the processing pipeline when students called inquiring about the status of their loans.

Primarily because these issues persisted, the College decided to join the Direct Loan Program, after conducting its own satisfaction survey with schools that had several years' experience with the program. (The change was considered at the suggestion of the recently hired associate director of financial aid, who had administered and liked the Direct Loan program while employed at another college.) The results obtained thus far have been those that were anticipated: Paper is minimized; the processing time cycle is reduced; office staff members always know where loans are in the processing pipeline; and reconciliation between financial aid office and federal Loan Origination Center records has been exact (source: Financial Aid Office database and Direct Loan Program records).

Situation: Administration of the student work-study program had resided in Financial Aid since the College first established the office in the 1980s, but administration of the program had always been given second priority, after administering the need-aid processing and counseling caseload.

Rationale for Change: The College's most recent strategic planning cycle identified experiential learning for students as an essential feature of the college's curricular and co-curricular programs. In light of this emphasis, it was decided that a review of student work opportunities was timely and appropriate. In the 1998-99 school year, the president appointed the director to head a task force composed of student, faculty, and administrative representatives. The task force's charge was to investigate how students work on campus and to determine whether current student-employment opportunities and practices supported the desired goal of experiential learning.

Result: The task force submitted its final report to the president in the winter of 1999. The report identified major issues associated with student work on campus, not only work in the work-study program, but also research fellowships, internships, work performed in the administration of their own student governmental and social affairs, and volunteer work performed as community outreach. Among the principal recommendations of the task force were to:

• Encourage all students to work on campus and provide the personnel, systems, and funding to maximize opportunities for it;
• Relocate administration of the work-study program in an office with appropriate expertise and a greater affinity for program administration, and provide it with the necessary staffing and automation tools;
• Establish a pilot research fellows program; and
• Encourage a greater spirit of volunteerism and volunteer work among student through the establishment of a coordinating mechanism.

Progress in the wake of the report has been encouraging. Work-study administration has been transferred from Financial Aid to Career Services. The College has purchased an administrative software package that will facilitate work program administration. The Office of Co-Curricular Life has taken the initiative to reorganize student volunteerism. However, there are still a few recommendations waiting to be implemented (source: Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Student Work, Financial Aid Office records).