There's a surprising amount of information about Studylink online, which is a service we're trying to keep in consideration when setting up the Lifehub app.
A lot of history can be sourced from this fascinating article here: http://www.critic.co.nz/features/article/1925/the-birth-of-student-loans
But here it is in brief: Studylink NZ is approximately twenty-two years old this year, having been started in 1992. It was rather quickly set up after in 1989 the Labour government introduced universal university tuition fees for students, bumping them up nearly 1000% in the next two years before allowing universities to set their own tuition costs in 1991. The initial student loan scheme that rose to deal with this included an interest rate of 7%.
Keeping an up-to-date site to keep borrowers aware of their loan information by comparison is still relatively new.
Studylink currently is run as a part of the Ministry of Social Development, and a statement on this years Studylink performance can be found here: https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/04/15/minister-pleased-with-successful-studylink-peak-season
Another very interesting read- I know it's Reddit, but there's someone who was a former employee working for Studylink answering questions and talking about the system here: http://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1a9qlg/
At one point he states that
"Best advice is to get it scanned into a system called "VRetrieve" at a local WINZ office, the StudyLink Call Center can access it within 20 minutes of it being scanned."
Perhaps figuring out how this VRetrieve system works and can be incorporated might help us with figuring out how the system can make the process easier for students rather than a repeat of Studylinks somewhat less-than-functional online process.
Other interesting web sources:
http://www.privacy.org.nz/information-sharing/operating-matching-programmes/ministry-of-education-msd-studylink-results-of-study-programme/
http://studylink.govt.nz/about-studylink/statistics/index.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/5294640/Fraudster-ran-Studylink-scam-from-prison
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