Long Lines:

The College of the Sequoias, a public two-year college located in Visalia, California, was not happy with the way that refunds from the college were being disbursed to its students. Like many institutions of higher education, COS issued refunds via paper check. Annually, the college would issue between 15,000 and 20,000 checks per year to the student body. The process was labor intensive and involved multiple areas of the business office.

“Often when we had large disbursements we would have to hire staff to disburse those checks to students.” explained Benita Vega, Financial Aid Supervisor.

Not happy with the way COS was distributing refunds, administrators began to search for another way to better serve the college’s students. “We saw these students standing in long lines disbursement after disbursement being frustrated and having that look in their face that they were not getting the customer service that they wanted,” said Dr. Linda Fontanilla, Dean of Student Services. “We knew that there were other schools out there, both two-year and four-year, that were on some type of card disbursement and also it was a point in time when we wanted to be more efficient with our own process and we had been talking about it for a couple of years.”

The Search for Better Student Service:

COS began a dialogue with a few different companies in hopes that they would have a service with the right combination of increased efficiency and cost savings for the college and better customer service for the student.

“We did a request for proposal and had you entertain the bigger questions we had about how this would look, how this would impact our current operations and what sort of processes you had in place to do this,” said Dr. Fontanilla. “Higher One having had the experience on the east coast with many clients, we were able to contact those clients as referrals and they gave us good to very decent referrals on your service.” The administration at COS considered offering students an in-house direct deposit option, but ultimately decided against it.

“We did think about it,” said Vega. “One of the problems with our current system is that someone would have to manually enter all the data. That was one of the features that we liked about Higher One. Your staff would take care of that or make it so that the students could enter their own data for ACH transfers. We looked at our system and determined that someone would need to take responsibility for entering all of those bank preferences and changing them whenever the student wanted and we didn’t want that work load.”

COS reached an agreement with Higher One in May of 2007.

Spreading the Word:

After the contract was signed in May, COS began the Launch, Higher One’s implementation process.
“Did we have any concerns? Of course we had concerns. That’s just being honest with you because we were venturing into the unknown,” explained Dr. Fontanilla. “Our Project Manager took the time to come out here and meet with us. She was very thorough about what we needed to do and what the goals and objectives of the marketing committee and the card and refund committee were. She did a great job of bringing us onboard and explaining to us what we would go through.” COS began to inform students of the new service on campus. Instead of waiting in line to pick up their checks, students would be given their choice between three ways to receive this extremely important payment: direct deposit to the OneAccount, Higher One’s FDIC-insured checking account tied to a Debit MasterCard®, an ACH to the student’s current bank account, or a paper check mailed to the student’s address on file at the college.

“We wrote all of our students a letter and we said this is what is going to happen, you need to be aware of it, and this is how those changes are going to affect you,” said Dr. Fontanilla. “This is the organization that we will be working with and this is what that change means for and how you can get on board.”

“I worked with student leaders to get them to buy into the program. We put Higher One fliers up around campus in major traffic areas,” said Debbie Douglas, Student Activities Coordinator. “We also passed out materials at the student services fair and at orientation.”

Results :

“The number one thing we wanted to see was the lines go down,” said Dr. Fontanilla. “We’re literally talking of having hundreds and hundreds of students in line waiting to get a check. Often times in the Central Valley where we are it is extremely hot. So you add that to the long lines and you get a lot of disgruntled customers. So just the visual of having that, we knew was not efficient or good customer service, good student services to our services so that’s been a primary goal. I would say that overall, we have met our expectations in that we know our lines are going down. I have every reason to believe that this is going to become more and more efficient to the point where lines will be a real thing of the past.” 90% of the refunds COS has issued through Higher One have been delivered to students using one of the two electronic methods of distribution. 82% of these payments have gone to the OneAccount. “I have not heard anything negative from the students. It is very easy and students are very comfortable with the concept,” explained Douglas. “I think that the transition is positive for the college. Students have an easier time obtaining their refunds and it is more convenient for them.”

 

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About our Sponsor

Tom Anderson is a Regional Director at Higher One. He is responsible for AK, AZ, CO, HI, ID, NM, NV, OR, and Northern California. He can be reached by email at TAnderson@higherone.com or by phone at 303-883-2797.

Joe Behlke is a Regional Director at Higher One. He is responsible for Washington and Southern California. He can be reached by email at JBehlke@higherone.com or by phone at (253) 529-7223.

About Higher One

Founded in 2000, Higher One provides higher education institutions and their students with efficient, convenient and easy-to-use solutions to handle financial disbursements. These include: student refunds, on-campus and community purchases, payroll and employee expenses, as well as the collection of payments from students, parents, and sponsors.

Higher One offers a suite of online banking services including the OneAccount, an FDIC-insured checking account, and OneCard, a Debit MasterCard®. To date, Higher One has disbursed over $4 billion dollars in refunds for its clients to more than 1,000,000 students, faculty, and staff at distinguished public and private higher education institutions throughout the country.

Higher One recently ranked # 85 on the 2007 Inc. List of the 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States. Higher One is based in New Haven, CT.