Journalists Toolkit for Higher Education Research

What is completely unique about the information provided by Educate To Career (ETC) is that our programs enable students to develop college plans that lead to real careers, and are financially viable. We help people to ‘do the math’ so that upon graduation, they have a real career track and a plan that doesn’t burden them with decades of student debt. Of course, this is all backed up by hard data.

What we can provide to you includes:

• All of the typical data points you’d find through the NCES, IPEDS and other Dept of Edu resources, though we’ve done the clean up, formatting, indexing, and we make the data easy to obtain.
• College outcomes data, including occupations with salary data. We deliver the gold standard for all forms of college outcomes data, at level of detail which is stratified by college and academic major.
• Input characteristics – who succeeds, and why. Who fails, and why. And with a 5 year graduation rate of 54% at four year colleges, it is important to know - who fails, and why.
• Economic analyses, controlling for input variables, tuitions, local labor market conditions and other factors to ascertain the value created by individual institutions and their academic programs.
• Our data go well beyond 4 year public and private schools. We have all of the same data relating to 2 year colleges and trade schools.
• We have many years of actuarial experience for student lenders and student loan servicers. Our credit data and research is unparalleled.

Key programs used in the process of college to career planning.

1. The 2020/21 ETC College Rankings Index is the benchmark system for rating schools based on the Economic Value Added. Our methodology ranks colleges on their ability to improve the earnings and employability of their students. This program continues to set the standard for determining which colleges deliver the best educational value.
   
   
2. College Business Plan - This program will build a business plan with you, inclusive of the most relevant financial data. This is truly a revolution in college planning and a must for every family working towards sending a child to college. This program saves families tens of thousands of dollars and provides you with a real business plan, with your results in Excel!
   
   
3. The College Admissions Probability - This revolutionary program provides you with the probability of being accepted to the colleges of your choice, and your Expected Family Contribution. Your results are shown in table form and Excel - perfect for the foundation of your college list.
   
   
4. The CareerBuddy is enormously beneficial in helping to show how a student's competencies should be applied to an education and career track. You’ll find this program to be brutally honest with incredibly valuable guidance on academic majors and college options.
   
   
5. Job FutureCaster - This program shows the educational tracks that lead to real jobs! This is real world career planning, for work oriented students.
   
   

Leverage the articles we've written relating to college financial planning.

As ETC is at the very forefront of college financial planning, publications in the financial services sector ask us to write for the benefit of their readers. Following is a collection of articles which will provide you with deep and detailed insights regarding our data, and financial advisors who utilize our college planning strategies for their clients. We encourage you to leverage any of the information contained within these articles.

Wealth Management relied on our data and expertise for a Question and Answer session based on the most college planning concerns raised by parents. Authored by Lynn O'Shaughnessy with ETC.

How COVID-19 Changed the College Planning Process. How do you develop a plan when you don’t know what to plan for? That is the question faced by every family with a child ready to apply for college. But that plan need not be made in a vacuum.

How Your Clients' Children are Lured into Oppressive Student Debt. If you were told that someone would offer you $750 for indebting each of your clients’ children, you would think they had lost their mind. But this is how student lenders operate.

College Planning in the Pandemic Era. Weighty issues need to be considered before making expensive college commitments that could easily be disrupted in the coming months.

Financing College Education When a Recession Hits. Planning for college and determining how to fund it is difficult in the best of times. But during a recession, it can be… a blessing? We’re not kidding, and here’s why.

How Much Do You Need to Fund a 529 Plan?. Putting income into a college savings account is a no-brainer. Like anything, the execution requires planning and financial expertise.

College Planning: Is the ROI in the College or the Major?. Over the course of 20+ years, families have been bamboozled into spending trillions on top-end colleges, while overlooking the fact that it's actually the academic major that is far more important.

The College Tuition and Admissions Probability Estimator. College is expensive. We all know that – and that is why parents come to financial advisors to talk about how they’ll pay for it. What you and your clients’ families may not be aware of is that the posted tuitions are rarely the price anyone pays. College tuition discounts vary widely and the methodology used to calculate tuitions is not disclosed by any college.

How To Negotiate A Significant Discount On College Tuition. College tuitions are negotiable. For the past 20 years, colleges have discreetly offered discounts, when pressed or motivated to attract certain students. Competition among colleges in recent years has increased the practice of discounting significantly, and the size of discounts is greater than ever. Covid has of course, accelerated the trend. To maintain enrollment numbers, public, state run colleges have increased discounting through what is referred to as ‘institutional aid’ while many private non-profit colleges are now discounting tuitions by more than 50%.