Tuesday, February 10, 2009

From Paper to Paperless: Transforming the Nation’s Financial Aid Process

Each year, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) administers programs that disburse more than $70 billion in financial aid to help students pay for college. Just a decade ago, the 13 million students applying for federal student aid had to use a cumbersome, complicated and sometimes confounding paper-based process. Now, with help from Vangent, a leading global information management company, FSA has a modern, almost paperless system—making life easier for students, cutting costs, streamlining a cumbersome process, and increasing efficiency and accuracy.

When FSA turned to Vangent as a private sector partner, it got results. The online system they designed, built, and continue to operate allows students and parents to apply for federal student aid via a secure, user-friendly web site, thereby nearly eliminating the complex, paper-based form that required considerable time to complete and a costly, labor-intensive data collection system to process.