Cochise College aims to improve student satisfaction by partnering with Higher One

Students will now receive financial aid refunds faster electronically

New Haven, CT –June 5, 2009 - Higher One, a financial services and payment company focused exclusively on higher education, has been selected by Cochise College in Arizona to electronically distribute financial aid refund disbursements to students.

As many institutions within higher education are currently facing decreasing budgets and increasing enrollments, administrators are searching for ways to streamline internal operations. Distributing refunds via paper check is both a labor intensive and an expensive process. As Cochise currently issues paper check refunds to their students, the college incurs costs for ink, check stock, envelopes, and postage, as well as the labor involved to support the process.

Administrators at Cochise decided to partner with Higher One as a result of positive feedback they received from surrounding colleges.

“We researched what other institutions were doing with student refunds,” explained Kevin Butler, Vice President for Administration at Cochise College. “We heard success stories and invited Higher One to campus to explain the program in further detail.”

As a result of this partnership, Cochise students will receive a card in the mail which will enable them to log into a secure website to select how they would like to receive refunds from the College. Students are encouraged to look for these cards in the mail. Each student will have a choice of two electronic methods for receiving their refunds: direct deposited into the OneAccount, an optional, no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account provided by Higher One, or ACH transfer to a bank account of his or her choice.

“We currently have an ACH program, but it is for mostly payroll, employee reimbursement and vendor payments. Student payments are more complex than our normal ACH transactions. Students tend to change addresses more frequently and there is always the hassle of recovering refunds should a student withdraw from classes. Higher One offered a solution tailored for student payments,” stated Butler.

Higher One will communicate the program to Cochise students so they understand how to use and take advantage of the new service coming to campus. In addition, Higher One collects, protects, and maintains student banking information and refund preferences, distributes the refunds, handles bounced ACH payments and returned checks, and fields any refund-related customer service inquiries from students or staff.

Dr. James “Bo” Hall, Dean of Student Services, who spearheaded the implementation teams for the college is optimistic about the new program.  “Once the program is in place, we are looking forward to a very efficient system to refund student money and to serve as the college ID in the future,” stated Hall.

About Higher One:

Founded in 2000, Higher One provides higher education institutions and their students with efficient, convenient and easy-to-use solutions to handle financial disbursements. These include: student refunds, on-campus and community purchases, payroll and employee expenses, as well as the collection of payments from students, parents, and sponsors.

Higher One offers a suite of online banking services including the OneAccount, an FDIC-Insured checking account, and OneCard, a Debit MasterCard®. To date, Higher One has disbursed over $7.76 billion dollars in refunds for its clients to more than 2 Million students, faculty, and staff at over 310 distinguished public and private higher education institutions throughout the country.

Higher One recently ranked # 79 on the 2009 Fast 500 list of the 500 Fastest Growing Technology Companies in the United States. Higher One is based in New Haven, CT.

About Cochise College:

Cochise College is a community college located in southeast Arizona. Founded in 1962, the institution serves approximately 15,000 students annually at physical locations in Douglas, Sierra Vista, Benson, Willcox and Nogales, as well as through courses offered online. The college offers associate degrees that transfer to universities and technical degrees and certificates designed for direct employment. Areas of specialty include nursing and allied health; computer science and information systems; aviation; education; welding, fire science, automotive and building/construction technologies; military intelligence; and liberal arts and general education programming. This year, the college will launch a new program in mechatronics.