PROVO -- Boasting one of the lowest student loan default rates in the country, Brigham Young University won a national award for a mandatory financial planning program invented by the school last year to help keep its students from becoming college loan deadbeats.
BYU was one of 10 schools this year to receive the prestigious Salle Mae Education Institute's Award for Financial Aid Administrators, an accolade largely based on the Provo private school's "Financial First Aid Kit" -- a seven-step planning process and 33-minute instructional videotape that each student must review before the school will certify a school loan.Nationwide, nearly 10 percent of college students -- or an estimated 13.3 million people -- are in default on what amounts to almost $27 billion worth of school loans. At BYU, however, only 1.3 percent of the schools students are in default on their school loans, according to Norman Finlinson, BYU's director of Financial Aid.
Finlinson credited the low rate of loan delinquency to both BYU's Financial First Aid Kit -- which the school began instituting last year -- and what he considers the high caliber of students who attend the school.
"We think it better helps students understand the ramifications of borrowing money," Finlinson said of the school's new financial aid program. "We ask them to think about their majors and to anticipate their starting salaries when they graduate. Then they have to ask themselves, 'Are there other alternatives I ought to consider to fund my education?' "We just believe the students who come here subscribe to a code of honor and ethics. Certainly honesty is one of them and they do all they can to honor and fulfill those obligations."
An estimated 30,000 students attend BYU each year. Tuition rates this past year were $1,415 a semester for students who were LDS, and $2,125 for non-LDS students, Finlinson said.
Finlinson did not know how many schools participated in the Salle Mae sponsored financial aid competition but said BYU has participated in the event during each of the past four years.
After gaining honorable mention status during the first couple of years, BYU has won awards the past two years. But Finlinson is convinced that, ultimately, BYU's students are the real long-term winners.
"Excessive debt destroys the quality of life with the burden it creates," said Finlinson. "Certainly an education's valuable but not at the expense of everything else in your life. That's why we created the financial first aid kit."