InsideTrack Reviews

Let's cut to the chase. Until very recently, many of the clients of InsideTrack were for-profit schools. InsideTrack is in the business of supporting "retention". The problem with this business plan is that the company provides that service to small community colleges and massive for-profits alike. I was on a corporate for-profit account where I'd hear about our clients regularly lying to students and breaking the law to get students into their programs and take out thousands of dollars of loans just to fail. I'm not saying "gee this person is irresponsible and perhaps shouldn't be in school" unprepared, but "wow, this student is homeless, doesn't own a computer, perhaps lacks basic skills to go to college but had an admissions advisor who buttered them up and made them feel like a bestie" kind of unprepared. In truth, InsideTrack has played a large part in the for-profit college problem. It's essentially an appendage of for-profit schools like DeVry, Capella, and EDMC (all schools we've "coached" at one point or another), and subsidized by the federal government, all the while taking advantage of poor students who mostly end up with no degree and thousands of dollars worth of debt. There's no transparency (a word you'll hear often in the world of ITK coaching) around how you are measured for performance. Essentially, ITK is always looking at improving year-over-year retention. We were always trying to beat last year's goals. Despite the fact that students are human beings, you had an allotted number of students who could drop while you still made your retention goal for the semester. After that, you are held accountable if your numbers come in low. It didn't matter if you never made contact with someone on the phone or they were not set up for success. Many clients paid thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars) for coaching services and the expectation was that goals were met. InsideTrack continues to ask coaches to remove barriers that are far beyond their control for students to be successful. In essence, admissions works to get their quota in, and regardless of the level of readiness of these students who come in the door, coaches have the burden of being held accountable for these students coming back. None of this is told to new coaches. Essentially, these details come in slowly as you receive your first roster and work for your first few months. Another component of the weirdness of ITK is it's lack of transparency around salary, wages, and upward mobility. This company built it's wealth off the back of the for-profit college industry. it used to pay coaches with its absurd certification system that is completely worthless outside of the company itself. Some coaches went through this process quickly before the financial regulations came into play a few years ago. Essentially, there are coaches who've been around who make upwards of 50k a year with a bachelor's degree while new coaches start between 34-37k. It's never clear when or if raises take place, and the process is very secretive. Again, no transparency. I was always pretty disgusted with the workload of fte. Coaches have huge rosters (sometimes 200 students) while ACD's (managers) would listen to pandora and always squeak through meetings without really accomplishing anything worthwhile. While the employer is at-will, there's a union feel of "putting in your time coaching" and making your way up the ladder. ACD's and CD's make 50-60k a year and the fruits of their labor are difficult to see. Coaches are thrown on the phone with often emotionally unstable students and regularly told after a brutal weeks' work "we'd like to see you do a bit more". Within the for-profit context of coaching, there's a wing of coaching services whose role is to support coaches who end up with these emotionally unstable students, or students who are facing life circumstances that make school difficult (in truth, students who should not be in school at this point of their lives). I would regularly talk to homeless students, students in abusive relationships, mentally ill students, and students who were suicidal. There was never any training on this, and there was never any acknowledgement that the population of students we were working with would bring these situations in spades. Self care was difficult because metrics, meetings, phone time, and outbound calls were always the name of the game, and whether or not a coach needed to care for themselves was never made a priority.