Two companies advocate for using standardized practices to obtain student outcome data and more responsible student lending.
Climb Credit, a student lending and payments company that is working to expand access to career-advancing education, announced a new partnership with the Education Quality Outcomes Standards Board (EQOS), a non-profit organization that helps postsecondary providers, state governments, and tech platforms to collect and report student outcomes data.
With this partnership, Climb and EQOS will work to prioritize student outcomes as an important factor in responsible lending, and increase accountability through standardization.
Climb Credit is the first student lender to partner with EQOS, whose mission is to establish a consistent process for collecting and reporting student outcomes data across all postsecondary education and training programs. Standardizing student outcomes metrics will enable all stakeholders—students, providers, employers, policymakers, and investors—to more confidently navigate the higher education marketplace, prioritize student success, and maximize ROI.
Climb and EQOS prioritize outcomes as an important factor in responsible student lending to increase accountability.
The goal of this partnership is to establish a clear methodology and consistent set of definitions and metrics to assess real-world student outcomes data. This consistency in measuring outcomes will drive enhanced accountability, and encourage a new standard across the career-advancing education industry.
“We’ve noticed that there’s a gap in postsecondary reporting for career-focused programs, where educational institutions will disclose graduation rates, but have more trouble tracking job placement, earnings, and career growth,” explained Kristin Sharp, CEO of EQOS. “To the extent education and workforce programs are tracking their outcomes at all, there’s no way to assess results or compare them across programs—a vital piece in allowing prospective students to vet a program’s ROI before deciding to pursue it.”
Applying EQOS’ outcomes data framework to Climb’s existing program assessment and student surveying process will allow lenders like Climb to offer loans for schools that are providing results to students—and therefore ensure that any debt created for students will not be burdensome compared to the outcome.
“We’re excited to build upon our continued commitment to working with programs that provide career-advancing results to students,” said Angela Ceresnie, Climb Credit CEO. “It is our continued belief that understanding student outcomes is an important step to being a responsible student lender for those programs.”
As a neutral third party, EQOS will provide additional infrastructure and process development support for Climb to continue to evaluate programs objectively and transparently in order to help student borrowers maximize their ROI.
For more information visit www.climbcredit.com.
About Climb
Climb (NMLS# 1240013) is an innovative student payment platform that makes career creation and transformation more accessible, affordable, and accountable than ever before. Driven by a mission to empower individuals to unlock their career potential – no matter what their credit profile – Climb identifies programs and schools with a demonstrated ability to improve the earnings of their graduates. Then they provide learners with financing options that are priced and structured to meet the unique needs of those seeking career elevation and increased earning power. Recognizing the dynamic and diverse nature of an economy in rapid change, Climb partners with schools that teach everything from cybersecurity to healthcare training, heavy machine operation to data science, and culinary arts to coding. While some colleges are struggling to meet the real-world needs of their students, Climb and its partner schools are committed to an inspiring practicality that brings real career results as individuals Own Their Next chapter. For more information, visit https//climbcredit.com or follow @ClimbCredit on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About EQOS
EQOS is an independent, non-profit organization that partners with education providers to collect and report outcomes-based quality assurance data. The organization’s voluntary standards give innovative educational providers a set of metrics to measure and show the real-world impact of their programs on learners’ economic mobility.
Original Press Release.