Buck Hunters : Consultant Helps Students Line Up Financing for College
Like many entrepreneurs, Connie Cooper set up her business on a shoestring budget. Her start-up company was different from most, however: It sought not just to make money, but to find it.
Cooper’s College Financial Planners in Anaheim specializes in securing funding for students. For a fee, it offers comprehensive financial-aid planning for college students and is one of only a handful of such businesses in the nation.
The 10-year-old company, which has worked with more than 900 families this year, provides services that are especially crucial in view of recent state budget cuts and tuition increases. Many of the families using Cooper’s company say sending their children to college would have been far more difficult without its services.
With colleges and universities in California charging anywhere from $7,000 a year for a state school to $25,000 for a private university, many parents and students despair of ever coming up with the money for higher education.
“Without having heard about their services, we wouldn’t be able to afford having three children in the UC system right now,” said Judy Knutson, a Yorba Linda mother of four college students--two at UC San Diego, one at UC Berkeley and one at Rancho Santiago College in Orange.
The Knutson family has been using Cooper’s services for three years.
Though many companies offer “scholarship searches,” few go beyond that. As a financial aid consultant, Cooper finds out how much money the student is eligible for at what colleges. She also helps parents and students fill out the lengthy and often confusing papers necessary to receive financial aid. For that service, the charge ranges from $125 to as much as $595, depending on how much time she spends with the family.
Nationwide, there are about 250 financial-aid planners, said Michael Rosen, whose company, Wizard Software, provides computer software to such consultants. Rosen, who is based in Akron, Ohio, said he foresees the business’s growing.
“Not just anybody can do this though. The person must thoroughly understand the field of financial aid and know the federal regulations,” Rosen said.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, $300 million in small, private scholarships are awarded nationwide each year. That amount represents only 1% of the financial aid available. The bulk--the other 99%--comes from federal and state loans and grants, as well as grants and loans from individual colleges and other private sources.
The College Board, a nonprofit educational association based in New York, estimates that nearly $31 billion in financial aid was awarded to post-secondary students for the 1991-92 academic year. Of that, $22.8 billion came from federally supported programs, including Pell grants and Perkins loans; $1.9 billion came from state grants; and nearly $6 billion from private sources.
Cooper says that new federal guidelines for financial-aid programs, effective last month, will allow more people to qualify for government aid.
Having taught for 33 years, most recently at Fullerton College, she has long been familiar with the financial problems facing students. The situation became a personal matter, she says, when her own daughters were ready to enter college 11 years ago.
With only $10,000 in savings, Cooper began researching available financial aid. After spending a year learning the intricacies of the system, Cooper says, she realized that the information she had gathered would be useful to other families too.
“I got into this through the back door, through need,” Cooper said. “I couldn’t handle it when students were dropping out because they were working full-time jobs.”
She started out advising only her own students. Then, using $5,000 of her savings, she launched a home-based business.
“Nobody wanted to help me at the beginning. Financial-aid counselors didn’t have the time,” Cooper said.
Next, she began attending conferences sponsored by the California Assn. of Student Financial Aid Advisers to learn the ins and outs of such counseling. By speaking with vendors at the conferences, she discovered computer software that would make her job easier.
Today, Cooper has four employees to help with her growing clientele.
Some high school counselors and independent college counselors send students to Cooper.
“We’ve never had anybody not come back raving about her. They tell us, ‘You found me the right college, but I couldn’t have afforded it without Connie’s services,’ ” said Peggy Ogden, an independent consultant with College and Career Consultants in Costa Mesa.
The 14-year-old business, which offers assistance in choosing a college and getting accepted, has been sending students to Cooper for about five years, Ogden said.
Those who use the service once typically stay with it all the way through college. One client, Cooper says, has been with her for nine years, starting when he was attending UC Irvine; he is now a law student in Kansas.
“It’s been fascinating watching him grow,” Cooper said.
Her current clients range from a family of four earning $19,000 a year to a family with $300,000 in assets that can’t be liquidated at the moment.
Cooper says many middle- and upper-income families don’t seek financial aid because they think they won’t qualify.
“There is so much available if they apply,” she said. “Nobody’s told them, and nobody’s going to tell them that they qualify for more.”
Dollars for Scholars
The amount of financial aid awarded for higher education has risen steadily in the past 10 years. Financial aid awarded: In billions of dollars, adjusted for inflation
Source ‘91-92* Federal $22.8 Private sources $6.0 State $1.9
*Estimate Source: The College Board
