ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS - INTERFACE WITH STUDENTS

Information About the Process

"The publicity campaign was inadequate, gimmicky and failed to target a significant portion of prospective Polytechnic students, as the focus was on secondary school students and Polytechnic returning students."

"A major mail-out to students prior to the end of year was doomed to failure. The student population is far too mobile for this to ever be a successful method of targeting. Exams, moving flat and often moving city means that mail has an extremely low impact percentage."

Currently, students receive little information about what process to expect. For 2000, this was probably exacerbated by the changeover from the previous system being radically different from 1999 where applications were made on campus along with the enrolment process.

The advertising campaign for 2000 was regarded as insufficient by institutions and student bodies in terms of both getting key messages across and reaching all groups of prospective students. The "guy in undies" advertisement, while perhaps amusing, was regarded by institutions as not getting across the right message. Advertisements need to include messages about the importance of accuracy of applications etc, and to be run prior to the academic year (about October).

School visits should also give more specific information, such as showing students exactly what acceptable documentary evidence looks like.

The booklet, How to Get a Student Loan and How to Pay One Back, produced in conjunction with IRD, is focussed primarily on individual eligibility and entitlement rather than process. These were sent out with application forms, and made available on campuses. The supply of SL5 booklets ran low, so that more needed to be printed at relatively short notice. An A3 folded brochure has now been produced for distribution on campus, with two or three copies of the full booklets given to institutions for reference purposes.

A one page diagram showing the system was only sent (without any instructions) to institutions to be distributed to students and others once the 2000 enrolment process was well underway. If this had been made available earlier, it could have been distributed by institutions with enrolment packs and been made available on campus. Furthermore, the one page systems diagram distributed is an "all purpose" diagram, which would benefit from being customised for different audiences, and supplemented by other information.

Information About the Downstream Implications of Student Debt

Students also receive little information about the downstream implications of student debt. The application process is focused on how much they need to borrow in terms of the shortfall between income and expenditure. Some DWI staff advised students not to do certain courses since they would earn insufficient income to repay their loan. DWI staff lack the knowledge of the education system and job market to do this, nor is it a DWI function, except for TIA students. It needs to be made clear to all Student Services staff that they are not to undertake this role.

Advice on Eligibility and Entitlement

Students seeking advice on eligibility and entitlement had to do so through the call centre, instead of doing so in conjunction with their enrolment as they had previously done. Consequently, they did not know whether they would receive a student loan until the end of the process when the VOS process verified their entitlement. Furthermore, advice given by call centre staff was sometimes inaccurate.

Some institutions endeavoured to advise students but lacked sufficient information to do so effectively. Since eligibility and entitlement to student finance can affect study choice and enrolment practice (eg enrolling in some courses now and some later, or all at once), it is critical that students can receive accurate advice earlier in the process. Students enrolling in nonstandard (and some standard) courses are often unaware of the implications for their eligibility and entitlement to student loans, unless they either seek advice or their institution informs them. If they knew they would not be entitled to a loan for a particular course they may change their decision about what to enrol in.

Provision of advice is one function which could also be provided locally, with co-location and a co-operative approach. Provision of services locally is discussed more broadly above under Design of Student Loans System - Structure.

After Application

Incorrect Information Given or Recorded on Applications

A number of applications either had information incorrectly given or recorded on them. One significant "error" was students giving a name that was not their full legal name, although they were apparently requested to do so. This should be corrected when documentary evidence is provided before the contract is sent out (although likely to delay the process). The solution to delays in ensuring the correct name is recorded on the system is to take applications face to face, sighting evidential documents at the same time, to ensure the correct, full legal name is recorded on the application at the beginning of the process (see Design of Loan Delivery System - Structure, above) as part of providing more effective on campus and local services for students for some functions. However, institutions still reported name mismatches occurring in the VOS process (see below).

Call centre operators are expected to read the information given back to the caller, but this did not always happen. Nor would this practice necessarily pick up spelling variations, or correct spelling of non European names. The "read back" check needs to be reviewed for effectiveness. Where applications are received by mail, data entry could be double keyed for checking, as some institutions did in the past. Neither of these practices, however, will solve the "not full legal name" issue so long as documentary evidence is provided at a later stage.

The robustness of internal checks and audit need to be reviewed with regard to data entry errors. Currently, DWI Internal Audit does not monitor student loans processing on a regular basis, but upon request.