To fax or not to fax (you don’t have a choice)
By and large, Canada’s student loans programs work. Aid is being provided to those in need. There are small groups of students who aren’t getting enough, and there are small groups of students getting way too much, but that’s not the point of this article—the point is method, not size.
Businesses are discovering revolutionary technology, such as email and web forms, all over the world, and the smart money’s moving away from business models that involve re-processing and poor customer service. Unsurprisingly, and rightly so, student loan offices are not businesses, or at least not in the “make money and pay taxes after providing goods and services” sense. But they certainly have a thing or two to learn.
Take, for example, the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). They have convenient office hours (8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday) which are perfect for students in dire need of help—those who couldn’t find a summer job. Students who have found work during business hours but aren’t being paid enough to make ends meet in the fall are out of luck. They could call during their lunch breaks, as OSAP’s phone system is, after all, advanced enough to tell you the expected wait time and the number of students ahead of you in the queue. Once you get through to their phone agents, they listen to the issues, pull up your file, and tell you to fill out a form. Then you roam your city for a working fax machine to send the information to someone else, who will spend more time re-considering the information you have already provided.
They have made progress in providing web-based service, but often require you to fill out information, such as your name and birth date, which already exists in their system. Logging in is another issue, since you must enter an arbitrary identification number rather than an email address or username that would be easy to remember.
I can’t make this up. I really can’t. My girlfriend wasn’t able to click “single, never married” on her initial OSAP web application this summer, because the option wasn’t there. The closest? “Separated.” After two days of calling, she managed to get through, no doubt eating up all of her cell phone minutes for the month. The agent pulled up her file, presumably on a computer, and asked her to fax a letter in identifying the problem. In this age, how could the agent not just change her marital status immediately?
Stewart Rand, a recent graduate of Dal’s computer science program, pointed out another huge deficiency with this slow-poke model of loan administration: the Nova Scotia Student Loans program is obsessed with paper and letter mail. The time and money spent on paper, re-typing forms, and mailing them could certainly send dozens, if not thousands more students to school comfortably every single year.
Bethany Horne, a former King’s student and *Gazette* editor, concurred in a recent discussion on loan processing, herself a victim of OSAP’s poor administrative practices, particularly their inability to deal with students who are not studying in Ontario.
Our student loan system should look at how much is being spent administering the loans. Re-processing, poor customer service, and paper/mail/faxes have largely been eliminated in the private sector because they take time and money that could otherwise be used to provide better goods or services, or to cut costs. Our student loan programs need new management, with an eye for efficient delivery of services, hours that suit students, and a focus on getting more of the already-allocated money into the hands of students.
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