"With $1.5 trillion in outstanding loans to more than 40 million borrowers, the Federal Student Aid office ought to 'provide services on par with world-class financial firms,' U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said Tuesday at the office’s annual conference," according to EdSurge. 

"In her vision, that means a single website and single phone number instead of numerous, confusing communication options. It means an updated version of the myStudentAid mobile application the Department of Education unveiled in 2018.

And for the first time, it means a chatbot.

Students are always brimming with questions about the financial-aid process, DeVos acknowledged in her remarks, and they’ll soon be able to pose their inquiries to Aidan, the department's new robotic assistant.

...

With little detailed information available about Aidan in the wake of its birth announcement, it’s too soon to say whether the bot can achieve that goal, Megan Coval, vice president of policy and federal relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told EdSurge.

Still, 'to the extent this can speed up the process for students to find the information they’re looking for, this could be really helpful,' Coval says.

Aidan is the latest chatbot born into a growing federal family. Virtual siblings include Sam, which helps people report scams to the government, and Emma, which answers questions on behalf of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration and Services.

It also has plenty of college-based cousins. In the past year, several software vendors have started selling financial aid chatbot tools—some of them bilingual—and institutions are adopting the services to answer frequently asked questions from students and parents.

According to Coval, these questions can include what the latest interest rates are, how to communicate with loan servicers, when loan repayments start and what repayment expectations are for a student who loses his or her job."

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 12/5/2019