The U. S. Department of Education has asked the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, to manage a national default prevention Listserv (discussion list) that will be available to members of the student financial aid community.
The listserv will provide assistance to financial aid administrators as they help student borrowers avoid defaulting on their loans, thereby strengthening the
integrity of the federal student loan program and reducing costs to
taxpayers. Aid administrators, loan lenders and servicers, and
ED personnel and their contractors will be able to
exchange information about best practices and services through the
Rutgers-managed system.
To subscribe, send a message to listserv@email.rutgers.edu with the
command "subscribe default_prevention your name" in the body of the message (inserting your name where it says "your name)." Leave the subject line blank and omit the quotation marks.
ED turned to Rutgers' Office of Financial Aid
for several reasons, according to Jo-Ann Craig, the office's director of federal, state and institutional compliance. She cited FY 2001
statistics, the latest available from the Department, that Rutgers
experienced a 3% default rate compared to the national rate of
5.4%.
She added that ED also was impressed with Rutgers' success in a
related program, the Late Stage Delinquency Assistance Project (LSDA).
In LSDA, aid administrators contact former students who are
seriously delinquent in their loan repayments and help them clear their delinquencies. She noted that recent statistics show that the university is now averting default for between 30% and 50% of its "late stage" borrowers.
"Rutgers has a tradition of exceptional performance in administering
federal aid programs and in its efforts to provide service to students," said University Acting Director of Financial Aid Jean McDonald Rash. "This default prevention listserv will have a great impact on the area of loan delinquency and default prevention nationwide.
"It will be a public meeting place where schools of every size,
lenders, servicers and government agencies can share information and
best practices that will ultimately benefit the ever-increasing number
of student borrowers and keep them from the serious consequences of
default."
Posted December 18, 2003 on www.NASFAA.org, the Web Site of the
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).
Please submit Web Site questions or comments to web@nasfaa.org
