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Edcor Review of 2003 Tuition Assistance Data Indicates Slow Adoption of Aggressive Management Tactics

Pontiac, Michigan – March 18, 2004 – Edcor, a leading provider of corporate administration solutions, has recently completed its third annual Benchmark Analysis of Corporate Tuition Assistance Plan Management. The analysis compiles program and policy data across Edcor’s 70 educational assistance clients. These clients range in size from 5,000 to 330,000 employees and cross most major industries.

Tactical Focus Remains
Assistance programs are not being viewed strategically and the activity has been centered on cost management. As a result, organizations are not taking advantage of the value associated with linking continuous learning and corporate objectives. “If companies would more closely align their learning investments with business goals and marketplace challenges, the return on investment would be much greater as opposed to just simply managing the cost of tuition assistance”, according to Steve Corso, Edcor’s CEO. “We suspect this occurs because the visibility to senior management remains low and tuition assistance historically has been viewed and managed as a benefit, not as a component of the organizational development strategy.”
In 2003, cost per participant increased 5%, while per course spend experienced a 7% increase, which is a result of fewer courses per person. Surprisingly, the overall participation rate in tuition assistance among eligible employees remains low with only 5% taking advantage of the benefit.

With the continued focus on expense management, the utilization of automated tuition assistance systems at Fortune 1000 companies remains low. These systems drive efficiency through automating support processes and improving compliance with assistance policy. Edcor typically finds that 3% to 4% of tuition assistance applications do not meet stated company policies and should not approved. When clients quantify these savings opportunities it becomes compelling to centralize and outsource the administration of tuition assistance programs.

Opportunities
Edcor see three significant opportunities moving forward:

• Accelerate the implementation of automated systems to improve user satisfaction and tuition assistance policy compliance.
• Use the tuition assistance provider as the link between organizations and educational suppliers. Enhanced linkage will result in reduced per course assistance expense and course content that more closely matches client learning objectives.
• More closely align tuition assistance with learning objectives that support corporate goals. This will result in enhanced educational development strategies and begin to shift the focus of tuition assistance from cost management to organizational development.

About the Analysis
Copies of Edcor’s survey findings, Benchmark Analysis: Corporate Educational Assistance Plan Management, are available by contacting Edcor at 1-888-222-9950, or through email at solutions@edcor.com.

About Edcor
Edcor provides organizations with outsourced solutions supporting learning and education administration, customer and employee relationship management, compliance management, and subsidy assistance programs. Through advanced learning management, subsidy administration and relationship management technologies, process management expertise, and call management capabilities, Edcor provides flexible solutions that improve delivery quality, reduce time to market, and enable clients to better meet the needs of employees and customers.

Edcor’s outsourced model enables organizations and their key personnel to focus on core business issues.