It is as important as ever to match financial metrics to impact and build a consensus around a set of shared fundamentals. Below, I introduce a comprehensive ISAs dashboard for investors, schools, and operators to consider when investing, launching and servicing programs, and evaluating the financial and impact performance of ISAs.
Enthusiasts praise ISAs as the most exciting innovation in higher education finance. Lawmakers, schools, policy advisors, and investors, compliment ISAs for being a much-needed alternative to private student and Federal Direct PLUS loans. They welcome the proposed pending legislation in Congress - the
ISA Student Protection Act. They recognize that ISAs, when done right, could help tackle issues of affordability, quality, and student outcomes, as well as create pathways for good jobs that address labor shortage and future of work needs.
Today, ISAs are making inroads in traditional four-year colleges and becoming the preferred funding method in vocational, job-focused training programs, primarily coding bootcamps, though also among flight training, software-sales, commercial driver’s license, nursing, and life sciences programs. At large, ISAs appear to have the potential to play a key role in building a more effective, efficient, and equitable educational system.
As a result, many actors in the ISA ecosystem say they try to “do well by doing good”. Many of them really do and are working hard to scale ISAs with integrity. They are bringing greater transparency, legitimacy, and discipline to the ISA space. They are better aligning schools’ incentives with students’ needs and interests. They are offering investors an opportunity to support specific student outcomes and achieve financial returns alongside impact. At the same time, when getting past the headlines, others seem to be just jumping on the bandwagon of “impact washing”– using marketing jargon to entice and engage students, schools, and investors without delivering real impact or providing sufficient depth and details of how impact will be met.
Need for Shared Fundamentals
I am mindful that arguments over how to make, measure, and manage the biggest impact with ISAs can be as passionate as the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is as important as ever to match impact to financial metrics data so that the various actors in the space can evaluate whether ISAs are meeting their objectives or not, and ensure that in fact ISAs have the potential to build a more sustainable higher education financial system.
Let’s take, for instance, one of the biggest challenges that schools and operators face in order to accelerate adoption of ISA programs: securing flexible and diverse funding for ISAs at scale. Investors from across retail, HNWI, family offices, hedge funds, foundations, schools, pension funds, endowments, philanthropists, and wealth managers, are watching the space considering how their different risk-adjusted financial targets can be met. Not surprisingly, amongst the questions potential investors raise, they highlight ISAs limited track record, illiquidity and perception of additional risk. They also question the strength of ISAs in the wake of an economic slowdown and/or low-interest rate world (read more
here). More sophisticated investors, particularly investment committees of professional and institutional investors, are strongly debating the intentionality and signals from ISA players.
At large, potential investors want to measure and compare their investment in the ISA space through a common set of financial and impact performance accounts. Whilst there is clearly no need to create a different set of performance and impact metrics for the various investors sitting across the return spectrum, why are existent investor materials and capital calls for investing into a “diversified, higher-yielding, less correlated pool of assets and cash flow streams” not accompanied by rigorous targets and practices for managing and measuring impact?
ISAs Financial and Impact Dashboard
To start the conversation about how we talk about financial and impact performance of ISAs, below are three dimensions of an ISA dashboard for investors, operators, and schools to consider.
First, from an investment viewpoint, a detailed overview of the ISA portfolio and financial performance data from all underlying income share agreements, as per the respective Risk Management & Collection policies in place.
Second, from a student position, and reported anonymously on an aggregate basis, a demographic and household characteristic profile upon ISA application, combined with survey information that sheds light into students’ attitudes towards debt, financial acumen, and employment desires and expectations. Subsequently, during studies and post-graduation, an overview of the impact of ISAs on the student cohort with regards to student success, employment and future of work, economic mobility, and financial and medical health.
Third, from an academic institution perspective, a profile of each school with itemized tuition and financial aid figures, overview of income share agreement program, eligibility criteria, and key terms.
Investment (as per risk management, servicing & collection policies)
Portfolio Overview
(e.g. total ISAs originated to date (USD), total number of disbursed ISAs, total number of disbursed ISAs students (by city, state, country), total number of schools & departments & majors offering ISAs (by city, state, country), etc.)
Financial Performance Data
- Parameters
(e.g. weighted average income share (percentage of income), weighted average contractual duration (number of consecutive monthly payments required), weighted average remaining duration (number of consecutive monthly payments to fulfill contract), etc.)
- Status
(e.g. total ISAs funded amount disbursed (USD) by repayment status, total ISAs outstanding balance amount (USD) by repayment status, percentage of late/overdue ISAs by stage, estimated illustrative yield based on ISAs funded amount disbursed, expected yield based on ISAs outstanding balance amount (USD) in performance book, ISA administration and servicing fees, etc.)
Students
Profiles (upon ISA application)
- Demographics
(e.g. percentage of ISA students by gender, ethnicity, race, veteran status, who are disabled, who are the first generation of their family to attend college, who are DACA students, who are international students, who depend on an ISA to fund their degree, etc.)
- Debt Aversion
(e.g. attitudes towards borrowing money, taking loans, use of credit cards, etc.)
- Financial Literacy
(e.g. financial know-how to make informed and effective decisions)
- Employment Preferences and/or Experience
(e.g. for undergraduate, percentage of ISA students working during the semester, avg. salary per month during the term or summer (by city, state, country), post-graduation employment industry preference, etc. For graduate students, avg. pre-study annual salary (by city, state, country), employment by industry, post-graduation employment industry preference, etc.)
- Household Characteristics
(e.g. percentage of ISA students who have dependents (children/spouses), percentage of ISA students who support their family beyond direct dependents, parent's willingness to potentially take on debt incurred by the student, etc.)
Community Outputs (during studies and post-graduation)
- Study Success
(e.g. percentage of ISA students who graduate, percentage of ISA students who graduate on time as per admission date, etc.)
- Employment / Future of Work
(e.g. avg. and median gross base starting salary by major and graduation year, percentage year-on-year salary increase by major and graduation year, percentage of ISA students who believe their vocational/college/graduate degree has significantly increased their ability to obtain and retain a job, employer profile by company size (e.g. start-up, SMEs, large corporate or <50 FTE, 50-500 FTE, >500 FTE), etc.)
- Economic Mobility
(e.g. percentage of ISA students who return to their home city, state, country post-graduation, who have lived in more than one U.S. domestic location post-graduation, who have lived in more than one international location post-graduation, etc.)
- Financial Health
(e.g. percentage of ISA students who could not have financed their education without an ISA, who had a poor or no credit score at the time the ISA was approved, who attained good or prime credit score after X year(s) of ISA on-time payments, etc.)
- Medical Health
(e.g. percentage of ISA students who have received information from their school about health topics, who are seeking or had sought counseling, who respond when asked to rate their overall health, etc.)
Academic Institutions (Four-year Colleges & Vocational Schools)
- Overview
(e.g. total number of undergraduate and graduate students (by in-state, out-of-state, and international), average standardized test scores (i.e. SAT, ACT, GMAT, GMAC by majors), admission application stages and timelines, total cost of attendance, including tuition, student fees, estimated room & board and personal expenses, available scholarships and announcement timeline, etc.)
- Eligibility Criteria
(e.g. list of majors with start, end, and graduation date, years of study (i.e. freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, graduate), average age at admission by year of study and majors, expected class size by year of study and majors, historic graduation rates by year of study and majors, historic employment rates by year of study and majors, etc.)
- Key Terms (e.g. total ISA amount available, tuition plus living expenses (by majors, year of study), total ISA tuition only amount available (by majors, year of study), total ISA living expenses amount available (by majors, year of study), income share (percentage of income), duration (number of consecutive monthly payments required), extension (number of months if income below minimum annual income threshold), grace period (study period plus up to X months post-graduation), minimum annual income threshold (USD), payment cap (number of times of total amount financed a student would pay), etc.)
Shifting to Action
Let’s not wait for ISAs to grow to size and scale (or fail to do so) and claim impact through the rear-view mirror. The industry has moved on from thinking that just because a product or service operates in the education space, it naturally has impact. It is time to walk the walk. The opportunity is ripe for ISAs to pioneer and leap over student loans as the financing tool that can generate the most positive, measurable social impact alongside a financial return (on a per dollar basis).