Brigham Young University-Idaho Case Study

Over the past few years, the Brigham Young University-Idaho Financial Aid Office has adopted new policies, software, and processes to improve its efficiency, boost its capabilities, and bless the lives of its students.

Institutional Profile

Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho) is a private, four-year university supported and guided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It seeks to create a wholesome learning environment in which students can strengthen their commitment to their faith and receive a quality education that prepares them for leadership in the home, the community, and the workplace. It’s also Idaho's largest private university, with a campus that spans 430 acres with over 40 buildings and more than 37,000 on-campus and 19,000 online students.

A Unique Academic Model, New Initiatives, and enrollment Growth

BYU-Idaho is student focused by design. Its academic model focuses on undergraduate education and offers 24 Associate’s and 98 Bachelor’s Degrees. The school year is organized into three, 14-week semesters: Fall, Winter, and Spring, plus one, 7-week Summer Session. Each student is admitted to a track of two semesters on campus. They also can attend during their non-assigned semester (called flex semester) and/or take online courses. In addition, BYU-Idaho offers seven online Associate’s and five online Bachelor’s degrees. They also offer several stackable certificates which are nested within Associate and Bachelor’s degrees.

University leadership also continually challenge staff with new student-focused enrollment initiatives.

Due to its student focus, its faculty’s teaching focus, the opportunity for students to gather with others who share common values, a commitment to real-world preparation, and a high-value educational experience, BYU-Idaho has seen tremendous enrollment growth.

A Relationship That Has Made a Material Difference

With Regent Education, BYU-Idaho found a solution that enabled its unique academic model, was scalable to support enrollment growth, and was flexible to accommodate new initiatives.

BYU-Idaho’s Financial Aid Office now is delivering student aid faster and more efficiently than ever. In the past five semesters, the university has been able to disperse a large majority of financial aid prior to the first day of classes. This has allowed students, as early as the first day of school, to focus their attention on classes and other important things.

Other improvements include*:

• Scaling to meet BYU-Idaho’s growth and increasing aid distributed 8% year over year (‘18-‘19 over ‘17-’18)
• Increasing total financial aid recipients 6.2% from ‘16-‘17 to ‘18-‘19
• Reducing aid processing time by 643 hours by allowing students to upload verification documents and automating steps requiring staff intervention
• Improving verification turnaround time from six weeks to one week
• Saving 1,400 work hours per semester due to daily auto packaging
• Being scalable for the next few years without having to add additional staff

And BYU-Idaho Isn’t Stopping Here

Although the BYU-Idaho Financial Aid Office has improved in many ways over the years, additional changes are forthcoming. The Financial Aid Office plans to revamp its website to clarify information, improve the student financial aid portal, simplify processes even further, and provide an even greater student-centric experience.

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*As reported by BYU-Idaho