For immediate release — March 6, 2009

(DALLAS) — The Dallas County Community College District has announced that it recently signed an agreement with Higher One, a financial services and payment company focused exclusively on higher education, to distribute refunds to more than 64,000 credit students enrolled at the district’s seven institutions: Brookhaven College, Cedar Valley College, Eastfield College, El Centro College, Mountain View College, North Lake College and Richland College, along with its virtual campus, the Dallas TeleCollege, which provides distance learning.

“We learned about Higher One through vendor fairs at various conferences,” said Kim Green, associate vice chancellor for business affairs at DCCCD. “Over the years, we also had attended presentations by Higher One clients. We chose Higher One based on the comprehensive level of service that they offer.”

DCCCD currently gives students the opportunity to receive their financial aid disbursements either electronically or by paper check. Although the program has been successful, Green cited several reasons for changing the district’s method of distribution and for partnering with Higher One.

“Several factors influenced our decision to make a change,” explained Green. “First and foremost, this change eliminates the need for us to store sensitive banking information on the district’s systems, which we believe is a clear advantage to both the district and our students. As we learned more about Higher One, we also discovered that students would find a number of benefits when they sign up for a Higher One account, including discounts, the ability for family members to add money to their accounts, and a faster transfer of funds to those accounts.”

Under Higher One’s program, DCCCD students will receive cards in the mail, beginning in mid-April, that they must have in order to select their refund preference. Each student will use the card to sign on to a secure Web site and then select how he or she would like to receive a refund: 1) direct deposit to a no-minimum-balance, no-monthly-fee, FDIC-insured checking account, known as the OneAccount, provided by Higher One; 2) an automated clearinghouse, or ACH, to another bank account of the student’s choice; or 3) a paper check mailed to the student’s address, which is on file at the college.

“We expect Higher One to provide faster service and customer support through its call line and Web site,” said Green. “We also want to use Higher One’s service to expand the student base for electronic refunding. We will start with financial aid students and then expand the database to include all students.”  

DCCCD will begin sending disbursements, also called refunds, through Higher One in May 2009.

About DCCCD

DCCCD, the largest undergraduate institution in the state of Texas, comprises seven individually accredited colleges. Since it was founded in 1965, the district has served more than 1.5 million students — including a record enrollment of more than 70,000 credit and 25,000 continuing education students in spring 2009. Following a successful $450 million bond election in 2004, DCCCD is expanding its facilities in order to handle an influx of students who are expected to enroll over the next several years. Five new community education campuses also are being added that provide access to higher education in traditionally underserved or fast-growing areas of Dallas County; the first satellite campus opened in fall 2008, and the remaining locations are scheduled to open during 2009.

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 more than $7 billion dollars in refunds for its clients to more than 1.5 million students, faculty and staff at more than 260 distinguished public and private higher education institutions throughout the country. Higher One recently was ranked 79th on the 2009 Fast 500 list of the 500 Fastest Growing Technology Companies in the United States. Higher One is based in New Haven, Conn.

Higher One media contacts:

Kelly Rohrs                
Edelman
(212) 819-4852                                         
kelly.rohrs@edelman.com          
 
Tom Kuhn
Edelman
(212) 704-4523
tom.kuhn@edelman.com

DCCCD media contact:

Ann Hatch
(214) 378-1819
ahatch@dcccd.edu

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