UNI’s Educational Opportunity Center Helps Students Get Out of Default
By Robert Smith, Jr., Executive Director of EOP/SCS and Director of Educational
Opportunity Center
The default rate of students continues to be a serious problem that poses a significant
threat to the longevity of Title IV financial aid programs. As educators and advocates
for our students, it is our responsibility to be proactive rather than reactive as we work to
provide services to the participants we serve.
UNI’s Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) program realized in 1994 that many adults
wanted to continue their postsecondary education, but were unable to do so due to a
defaulted student loan. Many former students in our contracted area had defaulted on
their student loans due to negligence. Others had a desire to repay their loan, but
lacked the financial resources to do so.
Our EOC staff designed an innovative program to assist our participants who found
themselves in default on their student loans. This program has evolved many times
until it now provides our participants with a valuable service and affords our staff a
success rate of 100 percent in getting our students out of default. While it is a time
consuming process to track down the entire student’s defaulted loan information, we
have found that it is well worth the time and effort on our part. This service not only
allows former students to continue and complete their education, but it also serves as
an excellent programmatic recruitment tool.
EOC staff work in partnership with the Direct Loan Consolidation program to assist
students with resolving defaulted student loans. The entire process can take from one
to three months, depending on the accuracy of the information provided by the student
to our counselors. Once the student’s defaulted loans are consolidated and refinanced,
he/she is eligible once again for Title IV funding for the education. This is the beginning
of a fresh start for many students.
Although our defaulted student loan assistance program has been a tremendous
success, we also provide thorough student loan counseling to our students who are first
time borrowers in order to prevent them from defaulting in the first place. Our
counselors make sure that our participants fully understand their responsibilities of
paying back their student loans and also the consequences of defaulting on their
student loans.
We explain to our students the forbearance and deferment procedures they can access
to prevent a default situation. As educators and advocates for disadvantaged students,
we must make sure that our students are fully informed about the entire educational
process.
It is also our job as proactive agents to provide as much information as possible about
the various educational institutions in our target area. We need to let our students know
about the expense factor of all the schools they are interested in attending and then
assist them in making the most cost efficient decision that still allows them to reach their
educational goals. This step can effectively help the student alleviate unnecessary
school loan debt.
Another way to steer our students away from excessive usage of student loans is to
educate them about the importance of searching for scholarships. Many of our clients
feel that they are not scholarship material. It is our job to inform these students of the
many unique requirements for obtaining scholarships, many of which are not merit
based. Our TRiO EOC counselors have set up a scholarship assistance service that
provides guidance and instruction to our students about the process involved in
conducting a successful scholarship search.
EOC continues to be proactive in educating students about loan repayment options
after they graduate: a federal income-based program assists borrowers whose federal
student loan debt is heavy relative to their income and family size in making smaller
monthly payments, and if loans meet certain criteria, some individuals may even have
the balance forgiven.
It is vitally important that we remember that we are the first line advocates for our lowincome disadvantaged students. The more innovative services we provide to our
participants, the greater the likelihood of their success in their academic endeavors.
Our defaulted student loan assistance service is one such program that seeks to
provide our students with the educational information that will lead to a decrease in
overall school loan indebtedness and their future economic empowerment.