Edifi , the name built of "education" and "finance", is a college financial aid service company located in Albany, New York, which operates nationwide. Its official name is CFAS (College Financial Aid Systems), LLC.
Edifi was born at a time when the financial aid process is more difficult and opaque than it is now.
Video Edifi
Origins
Edifi was founded by Larry Schechter in 1991; he remained sole proprietor throughout (with a hiatus in 2002-2004). It started in Wellesley, Massachusetts, but with Schechter relocation to the Albany area of ​​New York, he moved with him, and operated first from a one-room office on Union Street in Schenectady. Growth led it to move in 2001 to an office suite located at 409 New Karner Road in an unrelated area of ​​Albany (Albany mailing address); further growth led him to move in 2003 to a larger office space at 450 New Karner Road, where he runs a call center, with five hours - East, Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Hawaii - on the wall. When the operation subsided it moved back to Union Street.
The company started when friends and neighbors Schechter asked for his help in filling out the FAFSA form. Feeling that money can be made, Schechter formed a company, which initially sells its services from house to house. His main collaborator and second commander, after the company moved to Schenectady, was Maura Kastberg, who had a B.S. in mathematics. To grow the company, they decided to use the seminar method to make a presentation to a larger group of people. It's very successful and the company is experiencing explosive growth; in the early 2000s the company made a list of the fastest growing magazines in the United States.
Edifi initially gave the service a price of around $ 495, and offered a money-back guarantee, if it could not get enough additional financial help to cover its costs. It leaves a guarantee after paying for some cases.
Maps Edifi
Organization
Edifi is divided into five departments: Sales, Accounting, Reservation, arranging appointments for seminars, Customer Service, client-related and entering data from client phone interviews and tax documents to company-owned software (customized "front end" for Microsoft Access), and the Form, which is in charge of completing the financial aid form, and whose new employees are tested for their printing capabilities.
Marketing
Company services are elusive and marketing is expensive. In fact, the biggest single cost is postage for marketing materials. John Braat, who has had experience in various sales and management positions, is Chief Operating Officer and head of sales. The company has three assigned sales teams, many of whom make more than employees who actually do the work. Braat spent much effort analyzing where a seminar (sales meeting) should be held. It does not market in countries without clear population centers, like Montana. For big cities like New York, the three sales teams will work together. Seminars are scheduled to avoid storm season in the South, and winter storms in the North. Flying sellers across the country is another big expense.
The names of prospects purchased, from brokers selling information about prospects of college; most are students who have taken the College Board exams. Edifi came up with a technique of sending out invitations to students - rather than perhaps more skeptical parents - to attend free seminars where they can learn about opportunities for scholarships and scholarships. Salespeople do not lie to the family about what Edifi can do (though sometimes it does). The original contract was rewritten to say that Edifi had no special "connections" with the college financial support office and did nothing that parents could not do for themselves, if they took the time and effort.
Services
The first service Edifi offers to the family is to provide an estimate of the financial aid a family can expect to receive from any college it chooses, and what that "underline" means for each college. Behind this is Edifi's ability to find or calculate the actual attendance fee for each college - since 2011 posted on the website of each college, by Federal law, but previously that is often hard to find, if the figure is general at all. (In those cases Edifi calculates estimates.) This is meant to help the family make good decisions, at least from a financial point of view, where the child should go to college.
When a student is a senior, Edifi completes FAFSA forms, Profiles, states, and colleges in need and ensures things are delivered at the best of times. For example, the FAFSA should be submitted as soon as the application is open, estimating earnings rather than waiting months until taxes are made before applying. Edifi will send the second one, update the FAFSA after the family tax is finalized.
When an offer of financial assistance is received, if a copy of them is sent to Edifi, it will prepare a written analysis of the offer to make it understandable. (A small piece of financial aid provision is easy to understand, but many do not believe or cheat, presenting unsubsidized loans as if they really are financial aid.) It will also show, based on published information and previous experience with universities , whether the offer or not "makes sense". Many families do not know, and still do not know, that the offer of financial assistance can be appealed. Edifi finds the reason that an appeal may be filed: because the offer is not in line with the history of the college offer (it does not "make sense"), the family has high medical expenses, lost income, high debt, and so on. Edifi will write an appeal letter that will be signed and sent parents to the campus. Edifi will analyze the revised offer, if any, and sometimes submit a second appeal if the first result is unsatisfactory.
Some clients obviously benefit from Edifi's services and expert advice, and there are some spectacular successes. For example, the little-known fact that Edifi tells his clients that more expensive colleges can actually be cheaper, because these colleges often have so much financial help to be given more than are made for a higher price. Some families, especially non-English speakers, need help with the process and the financial aid form. Edifi tells parents what they need to do and when they need to do it, and makes sure, at least in theory, that everything is done on time. However, a student who goes to a local college, and whose high school will help with administrative matters, earns a small share of the benefits of parental investment.
Due to the high cost of marketing in seminar format, to ensure reasonable return on investment, Edifi markets its services with "packages" rather than "menus". One fixed price includes all services and how many of them the family chooses to use depending on which college the student is applying and the extent to which the family is working with Edifi, sends required documents such as tax returns and financial aid offerings. Not all.
Client dissatisfaction
About a third of clients think they have made major decisions in contracts with Edifi, enrolling their younger children, and getting their friends to sign up, thereby receiving a discount on their service updates for second year students and years next. The other third are not very enthusiastic, but feel that they at least get what they pay for. The last third felt they had been deceived.
Edifi had to deal with the constant cash flow of credit card companies, complaints filed with the Better Business Bureaus (which gave Edifi an "F" rating, because of the marketing), and Edifi's investigation was serious, investigations by public attorneys, high school counselors angry saying that they do everything Edifi does, but it's free (which most do not), and such. There are also many "exposures" in newspapers and on television, most of whom mistakenly believe Edifi is a "scholarship search service", but it is not. Under the laws of New York State, a three-day (then five-day) "cooling-off period" is required when a contract is made, during which time the contract may be canceled without penalty. After this period, Edifi rarely refunds. The problem is when Edifi sells its services to illegal immigrants who are not eligible for federal and state aid in most states, state grants. Some parents do not know English and do not understand the contract they sign; However, under New York law, the contract is still valid.
Client Services Department
Departments that interact with clients - interviewing them, collecting and processing their documents - are the Client Services Department. It's also the department that analyzes financial aid offerings (arguably the most important Edifi service) and writes requests where necessary. Translating information collected and entered by Client Services into FAFSA filled out, CSS Profiles, and college financial assistance forms performed by different Departments and much more quiet, Forms. As a quality control and error checking, all completed work must be proven by different employees.
The workers who actually do the work are mainly students paying the hourly wage ($ 9.00 to $ 10.00 per hour in 2003). High turnover and low spirits. Many stop when they know what Edifi is doing and what a reputation it is. Katzberg is universally regarded as an abrasive and unsupportive manager; a former, angry employee described him online as "Hitler in a party dress", and he and Braat as "fraudsters". Companies are not interested in maintaining experienced workers, which will improve services but should be given a raise.
Although it is not a deliberate policy (although it has the side-effect of increasing owner profits), the company has difficulty keeping enough workers to serve all its clients, and some clients do not receive the services they pay. Other families do not use all, or anything, from the service, ignore or ignore notices (sometimes in newsletter form) Edifi is sent by post. If parents send in the document as requested and call the company regularly to make sure their files are being processed, the company does the best job possible. Unfortunately, while documents should be processed quickly and without parental phone calls, this is not always the case, and cases where nothing is done is not uncommon. One year hundreds of offers of financial aid never analyzed or written appeal letters (unless the parents called to inquire) because the Client Service did not have the required staff. The company paid a full refund to a pair of parents pursuing the matter, which nothing was done no later than April in the senior year of the student, even though all the necessary documents were in the student archives. Many families forget Edifi, in the middle of everything that happens in senior years.
Edifi has no philosophy of ripping people off, and complains bitterly and openly that it's misunderstood by cheating, like a scholarship search service; it shows repeatedly that the sign of good faith is that it does not guarantee certain results. Conversely, there is pride in what has been done (much or most of the time), in many cases where students are really helped.
Extra Services FAFSA
Edifi (Maura Kastberg and Larry Schechter) are constantly looking for additional services they can provide in addition to filling out the FAFSA and other forms of financial aid. These include:
- Newsletters, whenever Kastberg finds time to write them. It provides reminders and tips for financial help.
- Handbook for each year in high school, with things to think or do for each year.
- The on-line counselor, who will answer the questions posted. Counselor's advisory questions are answered by the staff, there is no guidance counselor.
- College search engine (rented service).
- Preparation of online Online sample tests and tests (also not internal products, obtained through cooperative relationships with major college preparatory companies).
The reasons behind the impetus for non-FAFSA services are partly for marketing purposes, but also because so many students do not take the right high school classes that will best prepare them, or are needed, for college and the results, in some cases, on the worth of financial aid the greater one.
End of Edifi
Larry Schechter dreamed of enlarging the company: by partnering with financial planners, for example. In 2002, Schechter sold the company to two investors who hoped to make money by selling it back to Princeton Review. This sale never happened and the investors returned the company to Schechter treatment.
Service rates start from $ 495 to $ 595, then to $ 795, $ 995, $ 1095, $ 1195, $ 1295, and $ 1595 over a 20-year period. Additional students in the same family were the first $ 150, then $ 195, $ 295, and $ 495. In 2011 Edifi was faced with a national recession, an increase in air fares due to rising oil prices, inability to raise prices further (price resistance) and the impracticality of automating online applications, as opposed to the FAFSA paper that comes out of a printer computer in seconds. Maura Kastberg wants to transfer FAFSA application data electronically, even before the FAFSA is enacted, but the Education Department rejects it.
Faced with this situation, the company stopped selling new contracts, stopped most of its employees, moved back to Schenectady, and limited its activities to service contracts that had been sold. By 2015, this business has ended, and no longer has a website.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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