Conversations: Fighting Student Loans with Data Science
If you’re in between the ages of 18 and 29, chances are reading this title gave you a little bit of a shudder. Fully four out of ten young Americans (yes I’m trying not to use the term millennials, but that’s who they are) are saddled with student debt. The mountain may seem insurmountable, but that’s where tuition.io aims to make a difference.
Tuition.io is part of a growing contingent of companies that aim to help companies help their employees with student debt burdens. At its core, the concept is simple — tuition.io helps employers directly pay off their employees’ student debts. At its core though, the idea is to help employers solve the critical issue of employee turnover, while giving their employees a fighting chance at fiscal stability. It’s a novel concept, but a proven one — studies have shown that enrolling in employee education benefits can help businesses improve retention by up to 40%!
We sat down with tuition.io to find out how all this works. Given how simple it seems, it’d be easy to assume that companies like tuition.io can do something like this with just a table of benefits and a fat stack of checks. But, as with everything in today’s world, the reality is far more complex, involving a dizzying array of analytical tools, tricks, and the employ of a full-time data scientist to make all of this work. Our conversation, with tuition.io’s Director of Sales, Ashraf Mathkour, after the break!
Humanlytics: What’s the industry standard with regards to data science and predictive analytics?
Tuition.io: We are the only organization in our space that provides insightful data analytics, while the rest of our industry is simply offering a service.
H: In that case, how do you see your industry adapting and changing in response to the rise of data science and predictive analytics?
T: Tuition.io will need to continue to be the market-leader when it comes to data analytics in order to continue to succeed in our market. As the student loan debt crisis continues to grow, it will become imperative that Tuition.io share in real numbers how we can help our clients and our clients’ employees.
H: Are you “changing the game” in any particular way, especially with regards to using data science/predictive analytics?
T: Given we are the market leader, and have nearly 150 clients, we have data that differentiates us and allows us to truly consult our clients rather than simply provide a plan design.
H: How do use data science and predictive analytics to make that happen?
T: We have a full-time data scientist who works with our team to run our proprietary Student Loan Analytic Diagnostic to project the amount of debt that an organization carries.
H: What tools do you/your company use for data science and/or Predictive Analytics?
T: Full-time data scientist.
H: How can businesses like yours use data science to make products/services better and more accessible for the average consumer?
T: At this time we are a B2B business, however, when an employer signs on, all employees gain access to our platform where they are given a suite of resources, many of which provide the employee insights on his/her student loan debt.
H: Do you have any personal thoughts on the future of data science, machine learning, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, or anything like that?
T: Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI are the future. Those that do not adapt and use these tools to their advantage will inevitably fail.
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