USA Group: the giant in education loans doesn't behave like a not-for-profit.

• Author: Mengle, Rev
• Position: Company profile

USA Group

The giant in education loans doesn't behave like a not-for-profit.

Most commuters traveling on Interstate 69 northeast of Indianapolis through Fishers probably don't know that USA Group Inc. is the nation's largest guarantor of student loans, that it employs almost 1,600 people or that it had gross revenues of about $106 million last year.

But they certainly aren't going to have any trouble finding the place.

That's because the education-finance firm has just opened up a $36 million headquarters at 161st Street and I-69. The new complex has a dining room, an exercise facility, an adjacent day-care center and more square feet (401,598) than the Indiana Convention Center and Hoosier Dome. And it still isn't big enough for all the company's employees; some remain at the old Castleton-area headquarters.

It wasn't built overnight. Neither was the company behind it, though as Chairman and CEO Roy A. Nicholson readily admits, USA Group is one of Indiana's quieter business success stories. "To some degree, that's our fault," he says, "because we haven't been really oriented to making ourselves better known. Unlike the banks and insurance companies, we don't sell anything locally. Our marketplace is credit business. We don't put up billboards and say, |Come here, John and Susie Student, and get your loans."

The guaranteed student loans John and Susie Student receive, however, stand a good chance of having a connection with a USA Group company. United Student Aid Funds Inc. is the designated guarantor for the student loan programs of six states and certain U.S. territories in the Pacific. Education Loan Servicing Center Inc. services the processing needs of guaranteed student loan programs in another five states. And USA Group provides full-service management for the state-guaranteed student loan programs of four states, including Indiana, and the Virgin Islands.

In short, one in four student loans made in the United States this year will be either guaranteed or processed by companies in the USA Group, according to Nelson S. Scharadin Jr., vice president for corporate communications of USA Funds.

Scharadin points out that many of the concerns felt by parents today are similar to those that sparked the company's founding and the concept of guaranteed student loans back in 1960. Back then, rising costs were making it harder and harder for families to afford to send their children to college, and there were no broad-based federal financial-aid...