Financial Aid office improving, survey says
Utah State University’s Financial Aid Office is right on the money. A survey conducted during the first week of October shows that student satisfaction with the office has improved.
The survey, put together by associate director of Financial Aid Steve Sharp, is given every other year to a random sample of all financial aid recipients. This year, 378 students out of a pool of 12,300 participated in the survey.
The results say students in general are happy with the Financial Aid Office – nearly half of all students surveyed gave the office a five, the highest rating possible. This is thanks in large part to the staff, which the majority of students who responded to the survey praising with words such as “helpful” and “friendly.”
“There is no doubt that the best asset of the Financial Aid Office are the people who work here,” Sharp said.
Judy LeCheminant, director of Financial Aid, agrees.
“We have a terrific crew in this office that works really hard to solve problems for students and actually find anything that’s a potential problem and solve it before it impacts anybody,” she said.
Staying on top of things can be difficult in dealing with financial aid issues due to the fact that things are always changing and the regulations aren’t always logical.
“We understand when a student comes in and says ‘you know, this doesn’t make any sense,'” Sharp said. “We say, ‘you are absolutely right.'”
The Financial Aid Office works to keep staff members informed of what’s going on and spend a lot of time in training each week so they are prepared to answer students’ questions. The students surveyed said they recognize the increase in staff knowledge. Of those surveyed, 89 percent gave the general staff either a four or five rating in courtesy and 81 percent gave staff members the two highest ratings with regard to knowledge.
“Over the years … in general, we have improved the most in knowledge of staff,” Sharp said. “People always thought we were courteous even if they thought we were incompetent, but now we’re also
[competent].”
Speed of service is the only area in which satisfaction fell.
Sharp explained that the financial aid process can be long or quick and easy if everything goes well. It’s a complicated program, so he is pleased the office does as well as it does.
Only 69 percent of those surveyed gave the office a four or five in this area, down from 74 percent in 2001. However, the mean score has increased during the last 10 years, from a 3.2 to a 3.9.
Sharp said the office works continually to improve its services and make students’ lives easier. One major improvement the office is hoping to make is in respect to electronic services. Demand for these types of services has increased dramatically in the past few years. Thirty-nine percent of the students surveyed listed the Internet as their primary source of information, which is three times the number who answered in such a way when asked in 1999.
“The things that we want to improve more on will involve doing things electronically,” Sharp said. “We have dramatically reduced the number of students that even need to contact with us.”
Sharp said in the past, students have spent hours waiting in long lines to get help with their financial aid. This year, however, the longest a person had to stand in line was about 10 minutes. While this is an improvement, the office hopes to eventually get rid of lines altogether.
“We do a lot more proactively with the computer than we ever have in the past. We find problems before the students are even aware of them and fix them,” he said.
For the last two years, the office has sent e-mail notifications to students alerting them of upcoming payment deadlines. The biggest problem with this is that not all students have a valid USU e-mail account or, if they do have one, they don’t check it regularly. The office hopes to change that.
“One of the pushes we are making is to establish the USU e-mail account as the official way of communicating with students because it’s quick, it’s fast, it’s reliable,” Sharp said.
LeCheminant said she is also concerned with the financial issues themselves that students face.
“We worry about putting people into debt,” she said. “We try really hard to let people know that we’re here and we’re the best loan in town, but you have to be awfully careful.”
The Financial Aid Office has been partnering with the Family Life Center for more than a year now to provide debt counseling to students not only for financial aid loans, but other things like credit cards as well.
Most importantly, the Financial Aid Office works to make students’ lives easier. Sharp understands that students have a lot more on their minds than figuring out financial aid.
“We’re here to solve the problems of the students who have problems,” Sharp said.
He said the goal of the office is to be able to say to students, “Here’s your money. Now you can go to school.”
-lstapley@cc.usu.edu