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Learn about Apollo Education Group's initiatives to promote responsible student borrowing, including financial aid literacy education and a risk-free period for students to try before they commit to borrowing. Discover the results of these efforts and the impact on student borrowing behavior.
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KNOW BEFORE YOU OWEAN INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE: A STORY IN THREE PARTS CWAG Educational Debt Symposium Daniel P. Litteral Portland, Oregon Vice President & Deputy General Counsel May 2016 Apollo Education Group
TOWARD MORE RESPONSIBLE STUDENT BORROWING • In latter years of the last decade, Apollo’s flagship institution, University of Phoenix (“UOPX”), began to think more aggressively about which students were a good fit for the University, and how they pay for their higher education • Over last 6+ years, this evolved into an interconnected set of initiatives and student protections, many directed in whole or in part to educational debt – and how to encourage and support more responsible student borrowing
THREE AREAS OF FOCUS • Educating students and prospective students on financial aid literacy • Providing students with an opportunity to “try before they buy,” without incurring cost to themselves or debt which unnecessarily burdens their future • Monitoring how the quality of our advice to students – and evaluating the results
FINANCIAL AID EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS • Starts with well-trained enrollment representatives working closely with expert financial aid advisors – we have nearly 600 personnel who specialize in financial aid advising • Good perspective student conversations, coupled with relevant and usable resource materials, that are tough, informed and honest that include an emphasis on: • Estimated total program costs • Estimated loan amount for the whole program • Estimated future monthly student loan payment • Impact of borrowing less • UOPX has a full suite of tools, but most importantly a customized tuition and fee calculator which produces a Financial Plan
FINANCIAL PLAN INPUTS • Students, with help of our Financial Advisors, work through various critical inputs to help students and prospective students understand the financial needs and implications of paying for college, including: • Estimated costs for specific program • Tuition reduction opportunities, including discounts afforded to our students who are employees of select companies, currently over 2,000 companies • Grants and Scholarships • Student’s own money • Loans • Produces a full summary with, critically, the estimate future monthly student loan payment
“TRY BEFORE YOU BUY” • Over 5 years ago, UOPX began UNIV, a free, three-week, mandatory orientation program for new students or those with less than one year of college credit • One week was devoted to financial planning for college and to encourage responsible borrowing • 20% of students who started UNIV either did not complete or completed and self-elected not to continue to a UOPX program, but incurred no cost or debt • Evolved into Risk-Free Period in which they undertook much of the same financial planning during the first three weeks of their first for-credit course – and unless, they stayed into 4th week, they left with no cost or debt
HOW DO WE KNOW THEY KNOW BEFORE THEY OWE? • Regardless of how expert your financial aid advising, financial tools or integration of financial planning in curricula, monitoring of interaction between students and prospective students and student facing personnel is critical • UOPX invests heavily in call monitoring • Our Department of Quality Assurance and Student Success: • Has approximately 40 full-time personnel • Who monitor nearly a million calls a month • With customized, highly-sophisticated software that scans calls in near real time with customized and continuously evolving lexicons • In addition to use with personnel training and quality assurance, we use it to require our managers to contact students directly and correct any misinformation within 48 hours
RESULTS SO FAR • No easy solutions; programs is incremental • Some measurements of progress include: • Average amount borrowed by all UOPX students declined by 2.2% between 2014 and 2015 • One-third of our students now elect to borrow less than their maximum eligibility • Our Cohort Default Rates (“CDRs”) have declined, markedly, across the last few reporting years, including a decline in 3 Year CDRs in Cohort Years 2011 and 2012 from 19.0% to 13.5%. This is close to the national average across sectors of 11.8%