Back on the Road to Success with Intervalor and Cogna
The Arvato subsidiary Intervalor teamed up with the Brazilian educational giant Cogna to develop a student retention program that supports Brazil’s students in continuing their studies.
Brazil has an education problem. This is also the view of the Bertelsmann Stiftung: In this year’s SDG Index progress report, which it produces in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Solution Network, the foundation notes that the country faces significant challenges in achieving SDG 4 – quality education. The lack of quality in the public schools is one of the reasons why Brazilian companies like Cogna concentrated on private schools at an early stage. The demand for good private schools is growing. More and more parents are coming to realize that, for a place at a coveted university or a chance on the labor market, their children need better educational qualifications than many public institutions in Brazil can guarantee.
Introduction of a retention program
The Arvato subsidiary Intervalor works closely with the education provider Cogna, which offers funding for degrees at private schools. The Brazilian financial services company initially focused its collaboration with Cogna on the collection of outstanding semester fees. However, the two partners quickly identified the high dropout rate as the main problem. So from that point on, Intervalor no longer focused solely on collecting semester fees, but also on preventing students from dropping out. The introduction of a student retention program ensures that students who have difficulties in their studies are identified early on. For this purpose, the information available to Intervalor is linked with the information from the universities on success rates and activity indexes. The aim is to first contact students directly after enrolment in order to establish initial contact. Secondly, students who have fallen behind on their payments, want to discontinue their studies, or have already done so, are to be encouraged to continue their studies. The retention program has already significantly reduced the number of dropouts from Brazilian private schools. Since the beginning of the student retention program, more than 275,000 students have already been contacted. Through further discussions Intervalor was also able to prevent the exmatriculation of more than 64,000 students.
Bertelsmann supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
With the 2030 Agenda adopted in 2015, the international community - under the auspices of the United Nations - committed itself to 17 global goals for a better future. The guiding principle of the 2030 Agenda is to enable a life in dignity for humans world-wide and at the same time to lastingly preserve the natural foundations of life. This includes economic, social, and ecological aspects. The 2030 Agenda underlines the shared responsibility of all stakeholders: politics, business, science, civil society – and every individual. As a member of the UN Global Compact, Bertelsmann supports the 2030 Agenda. Click here to find out how.
