Campus Cards, College and University Identification and Security

Illinois community college to use Higher One for financial aid refunds

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Lincoln Land Community College becomes the 12th Illinois institution to utilize Higher One’s financial aid refund services. Using the company’s OneDisburse Refund Management system, the school will now be able to speed refund distributions to students while reducing the time-consuming and labor-intensive issuance of paper checks.


With Higher One’s OneDisburse Refund Management, students are given increased choice in how they receive their refunds including: direct deposit to the OneAccount, a no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account provided by Higher One, and an ACH transfer to a bank of the student’s choice.

For the college, this new process means less work during the distribution process. The institution simply provides Higher One a flat file of students receiving refunds and the amounts of each. LLCC then sends Higher One a wire for the total amount of the refund disbursement. In addition to the distribution process, Higher One markets the program to students, collects and protects student banking information, handles any returned payments, and fields any refund related customer service inquiries.

“We actually did consider [building] an internal system, but the more we heard about Higher One and all the bells and whistles the program offered, we decided to go with them,” said Karie Longhta, LLCC controller.  [end] 

Personal information of 9,000 current and prospective students was inadvertently posted online by Valencia College in Orlando. The school has apologized for the mistake.

The information included the students’ names, addresses, dates of birth and student ID numbers but not their Social Security numbers or financial information.

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Sallie Mae is rolling out fee free ATMs on select campuses which enable student checking account customers to withdraw cash surcharge-free using their Sallie Mae Debit MasterCard.

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Heartland Payment Systems Campus Solutions division, in partnership with Bridgeway Solutions, an identification and security solutions provider, has been chosen as one of South Carolina’s preferred system providers for electronic disbursement of financial aid refunds and payments to students.

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Students at Park Hills, Mo.-based Mineral Area College will be receiving their financial aid refunds faster this year through a prepaid card issued by Central National Bank in Oklahoma.

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