Student Finance User Group Meeting
June 20th, 2012•Bismarck, NDMinutes assigned to: Mayville State University

Minutes-

Attendees:

UND (Mary Anderson, Heidi Smart, Chelsea Larson)NDUS (Angela O’Leary, Marie Lindstrom, Sireesha, Dee Muir)

NDSU (Kelly Bisek, Carrie, and Kim Larson)MASU (Danielle)NDSCS (Carla Swenson, Aimee Devries)

LRSC (Mary Dion, Val Wood)WSC (Crystal Hotchkiss)MiSU (LadonaMalachowski)MiSUB (Judy Higgins, Loretta)

DSU (Janet Reisenauer)VCSU( Katie Sather)BSC (Mary Eisenbraun, Krystin)

Also Present: Marie, Dee, Angela and Craig

1) Chelsea (UND): Reports to track standard AR stats

  1. Chelsea is looking for input from other campuses on ways for us to better be tracking AR on accounts and students. BSC has a report that they run in order to break down the different aspects of the AR by department and fund. Ladona has a per term report that she uses to further break down the charges on accounts receivable for housing, books, etc. The report is usually emailed to Ladona and she is wondering if it is something that her IT dept. runs for her or not.

2)Kelly (NDSU): DR Request: Minor change to the agency extract report

  1. Kelly covered the minor changes that are happening with the agency extract report.

3)Chelsea (UND): Collection statistics

  1. UND has been utilizing the Service indicators as well as the payment plan indicators to keep students from going to collections. In the even that students pay off their accounts, the service indicator is removed. Because of this, there is no way to track those accounts that were in a payment plan before year end. It is difficult to know who and when the payment plan was set up. The issue is finding a way to track this.
  2. The next issue is being able to track funds coming from collection agencies. Most of the campuses post the full amount to the student account and then the department is charged for the commission portion of the account payable for the collections agency. Kim at NDSU, using the report NDU_0079_SF accounting entry by item to see where each of the payments goes. This allows them to track whether housing, or books, or mandatory fees were paid by the funds.
  3. Quality of the agencies used by the campuses was also discussed in what the cost was briefly mentioned as well.

4)Katie (VCSU): Electronic Billing Process Questions

  1. Graduate and non-student accounts are being missing in the electronic billing cycles because they do not have a campus email account. In order to solve this, Angela suggested using billing by career in which case if they are a non-student, their “preferred” email address is the one that gets the ebill.
  2. Minot does a blanketed paper email to solve the problem because they don’t want to miss anyone that has a balance on their account. They have found this to be effective on their campus.
  3. Touchnet also offers the option to the student to have an additional email address for their bill. This does need to be added by the student within the system. When this is done the bill is sent to their campus and additional email address.

5)Chelsea (UND): Perkins loans servicing

  1. Each campus uses a different agent through the loan servicing center for their Perkins loans. Cost is very high for the services provided. Chelsea suggested maybe looking into a different agency for this.
  2. Kelly suggested to make a committee that would come together to make a decision on what the options were going to be for the campuses as a whole with the Perkins Loan servicing. As of right now, the committee members are Chelsea, Mary, Krystin, and Kelly.

6)LaDona (MSU): Dual Credit Tuition Rate Discussion

  1. A while back, there was discussion about whether or not there was going to be a consistent charge for the dual credit students and how the campuses were going to be addressing this. As of right now, there is a committee with several members from BSC that are tackling the issue. No details have been released. We don’t see this being implemented for fall 2012. Minot has concerns with the flat rate of dual credit because of the additional security measures that are required for individuals taking the course through the AFB.
  2. This has become a legislative issue. State board of higher ed has a committee that is looking into not only the cost of the class but the level of the class.

7)Chelsea (UND): Ideas on decreasing return of federal funds for unofficial withdrawals?

  1. Most of the campuses do not require attendance to be taken in classes. Because of this, unofficial withdrawals are being affected because they don’t have a specific withdrawal date.
  2. Because withdrawals go by the last date of attendance, it is up to the faculty members to track this. Many campuses are addressing the issue through the staff senate to emphasize the imporatance of knowing when the student’s last attendance date is.
  3. When all else fails, the last date of attendance comes down to the last quiz or assignment that was submitted by the student.

8)Carla (NDSCS): FA Fund Authorization Project Discussion

  1. It was recently discovered the Title IV money is now only to be paying tuition. Students are given the option on whether they would like to have their FA money pay for previous or future charges as well as if they would like it to cover housing and other charges on their account. There are now pop up boxes that will appear to the students allowing them to opt to pay or not pay their other charges.
  2. Discussion on the topic was extensive. Many campuses are looking at strategies to minimize losses because of the change. It was brought us that we can hold their checks for up to 20 after disbursement date in order to have the student pay their other charges on their account. This practice has been successful for NDSU.
  3. Angela addressed to topic and that there currently is ongoing research on the effects of this new change within the system. She has contacted all the campuses to have them look at their charges priority and how these changes are affecting that.
  4. It was decided to have the statement s that pop up to the student to be consistent among campuses in order to make the transition easier.
  5. When it comes to the rent/room charges, Angela stated that if the policy covers the parent node, then the child nodes are also covered. Being that the parent node of Room includes rent, rent is covered.
  6. Discussion was held also on the issue of student’s withdrawing as soon as they get their check in the mail and not paying back the debt because they reside on tribal territory. It was discussed on options to hold the checks later or have the FA dept. wait to request funds until the last day to drop. BSC has a prepaid tuition requirement for individuals who have been in collections previously or that have had NSF checks and such on their accounts.

9)Chelsea (UND): Group Detail Post reports

  1. Marie addressed the changes that will be happening on the files that are processed. There are two different options, text or Spreadsheet. There issues with how the information is being formatted when we attempt to put it in a spreadsheet.

10)LaDona (MSU): Due Date on Student Accounts Discussion

11)NDU_FA_0197: Funds Authorization (See Printed email) Covered in extent in Item 8

12)Katie (VCSU): Late Fees

  1. VCSU touched base with the other campuses on how they are processing their charges and at what percentage. There was discussion on the late fees and whether or not we could charge a late fee on the late fees. VCSU is still currently waiting for their approval and also production of communication to the students on the late fee.

13)Marie: DR List

  1. Listed items that are now available for testing. Collection module updates have been placed in stage to continue testing the collection letters processing.

14)Angela: Third Party Enhancement