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Financial Aid: Department Of Education's EdNet

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To achieve the American dream of a college education, a student loan is the only solution for millions of students. The Depart ment of Education (DOE) recently implemented EdNet, a new ATM backbone network, to help its 5,000 employees process and track 10 million student loans a year. The Office of Student Financial Assistance

manages the systems that disperse, track and account for student financial aid, including Pell Grants, Guaranteed Student Loans and college work-study programs. DOE employees in five buildings at the Washington, D.C., headquarters are connected to a Bell Atlantic FDDI MAN, and 10 regional offices nationwide are connected to headquarters by frame relay. Many related organizations, including business partners who perform outsourced work, guaranty agencies and banks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Social Security Administration (SSA) and Internal R evenue Service (IRS) all connect to EdNet directly via Cisco routers and T1 or 56-Kbps lines.

"Four years ago, when ATM was just a wrinkle, the Department had a dual-broadband backbone. We've caught the ATM wave right on th e sweet spot," explains Steven Corey-Bey. With Ethernet- and ATM-enabled UB Networks hubs, the DOE has created a server farm on switched Ethernet, and a 155-Mbps ATM backbone, which uses LANE (LAN emulation) 1.0. Users have switched or shared Ethernet to their desktops.

Windows NT runs on the servers. Most PCs run Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups. DOE users work on PCs running Attachmate's 3270 emulation software. The DOE's enterprise database is Oracle on Unix and NT. Corey-Bey notes, "We are still sitting on the fence on Windows95."

The DOE has an extensive set of applications designed to track loans. For instance, the audit resolution branch and the Institutional Participation and Oversight service uses a 500-node Watermark NT-based imaging system, which is scheduled to expand to 1,400 users. The National Student Loan Data System, a 350-GB DB-2 database, stores information about every student in the country who obtains a loan, to prevent an applicant from applying for and receiving multiple loans in different states. A Post Secondary Education Participant System (PEPS), running on Oracle 7, archives program agreements for schools that offer student financial aid. The Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL), an IDMS-based system, manages Guaranteed Student Loans. The Direct Loan System manages the the William D. Ford federal direct student loan program. "Users are able to access all of the systems simultaneously," says Corey-Bey.

May 15, 1996