Origins
Edifi was founded by Larry Schechter in 1991; he remained its sole owner throughout (with a hiatus in 2002-2004). It started inOrganization
Edifi was divided into five departments: Sales, Accounting, Reservations, which set up appointments for the seminars,Marketing
The company's services were hard to understand and marketing was expensive. In fact, its greatest single expense was postage for marketing materials. John Braat, whose background was in sales, wasServices
The first service Edifi offered families was to give estimates of the financial aid a family could expect to receive from whatever colleges it chose, and what the "bottom line" for each of those colleges would be. Behind this was Edifi's ability to find or calculate the true cost of attendance for each college — since 2011 posted on each college's Web site, by Federal law, but before that often hard to locate, if the figure was public at all. (In those cases Edifi calculated an estimate.) This was intended to help families make good decisions, at least from a financial point of view, of where the child should go to college. When the student was a senior, Edifi completed the FAFSA, the College Board Profile, state, and college need-based forms and made sure things were submitted at the best times. For example, under regulations of the time, the FAFSA should have been submitted immediately after the applications opened in January, estimating income rather than waiting months until taxes were done before applying. Edifi would submit a second, updated FAFSA once a family's taxes were completed. When financial aid offers were received, if copies of those were sent to Edifi, it would prepare a written analysis of the offer to make it understandable. (A minority of financial aid award letters were easy to understand, but many were cryptic or outright deceptive, presenting unsubsidized loans as if they were really financial aid.) It would also indicate, based on published information and its own previous experience with the colleges, whether the offer was or was not "reasonable". Many families did not know, and still do not know, that financial aid offers can be appealed. Edifi looked for reasons that an appeal could be filed: because the offer was not in line with the college's offer history (it was not "reasonable"), the family had high medical expenses, loss of income, high debt, and so on. Edifi would write appeal letters which the parents would sign and send to the college. Edifi would analyze the revised offer, if any, and sometimes filed a second appeal if the results of the first were unsatisfactory. Some clients clearly benefited from Edifi's services and expert advice, and there were a few spectacular successes. For example, a little-known fact that Edifi informed its clients about was that more expensive colleges could actually cost less, because these colleges often had so much financial aid to give out that it more than made up for the higher price. Some families, especially non-English-speaking ones, needed help with the financial aid process and forms. Edifi told the parents what they needed to do and when they needed to do it, and made sure, at least in theory, that things were done on time. However, a student who was going to a local community college, and whose high school would help with the paperwork, got little return on the parents' investment. Because of the high cost of marketing in a seminar format, to ensure a reasonable return on investment, Edifi marketed its services on a "package" rather than a "menu" basis. One fixed price covered all the services and how many of them the family chose to use depended on which colleges the student applied to and the degree to which the family cooperated with Edifi, sending in needed documents like tax returns and financial aid offers. Not all did.Client dissatisfaction
About one-third of the clients thought that they had made a great decision contracting with Edifi, enrolled their younger children, and got their friends to sign up, thereby receiving a discount on renewals of their service for the students' sophomore and later years. Another third was not as enthusiastic, but felt that they had at least gotten what they paid for. The last third felt they had been ripped off. Edifi had to deal with a constant stream of charge-backs from credit card companies, complaints filed withEmployee lawsuits
There was also a lawsuit by an employee, Huda Saaidi, who alleged discrimination and a hostile work environment. Another employee, Steve d'Emilia, successfully appealed a discharge for cause with the New York State Bureau of Unemployment Compensation (meaning that he was entitled to unemployment compensation).The Client Services Department
The department which interacted with the clients - interviewing them, gathering and processing their documents - was the Client Services Department. It was also this department that analyzed financial aid offers (arguably Edifi's most important service) and wrote appeals when appropriate. Translating the information gathered and input by Client Services into filled-out FAFSAs, CSS Profiles, and college financial aid forms was done by a different and much quieter department, Forms. As a quality control and check against errors, all completed work had to be proofed by a different employee. The workers who actually did the work were primarily college students paid an hourly wage ($9.00 to $10.00 an hour in 2003). Turnover was high and morale was low. Many quit when they learned what Edifi did and what its reputation was. Katzberg was universally perceived as an abrasive, unsupportive manager; a former, angry employee described her online as "Hitler in a ball gown", and her and Braat as "borderline con artists". The company was uninterested in retaining experienced workers, who would have improved service but would have had to have been given raises. While it was not a deliberate policy (though it had the side effect of increasing the owner's profit), the company had difficulty retaining enough workers to service all its clients, and some clients did not receive the services they paid for. Other families did not use all, or any, of the services, ignoring or not noticing the notices (sometimes in the form of newsletters) Edifi sent through the mail. If the parents sent in documents as requested and called the company regularly to be sure their file was being processed, the company did as good a job as it could. Unfortunately, while documents should have been processed rapidly and without parent phone calls, this was not always the case, and cases in which nothing was done were not rare. One year hundreds of financial aid offers never got analyzed nor appeal letters written (unless parents called to inquire) because Client Services did not have the staff needed. The company did make a full refund to one pair of parents who pursued the matter, for whom nothing had been done as late as April of the student's senior year, although all necessary documents were in the student's file. Many families simply forgot about Edifi, amid everything going on in the senior year. Edifi did not have a philosophy of ripping people off, and complained bitterly and publicly that it was being unfairly lumped in with out-and-outExtra-FAFSA services
Edifi (Maura Kastberg and Larry Schechter) were constantly looking for additional services they could provide other than filling out the FAFSA and other financial aid forms. These included: * Newsletters, whenever Kastberg found time to write one. These gave financial aid reminders and tips. * Handbooks for each year in high school, with things to be thought of or worked on for each year. * An on-line guidance counselor, who would respond to questions posted. Guidance counselor questions were answered by staff, there was no one guidance counselor. * A college search engine (a leased service). * Online SAT preparation and sample tests (also not an in-house product, acquired through a cooperative relationship with a major college prep company). The reason behind the push for non-FAFSA services was in part for marketing purposes but also because so many students did not take the proper high school classes that would best prepare them, or were required, for college and result, in some cases, in greater financial aid eligibility.The end of Edifi
Larry Schechter had dreams 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 reselling it to the Princeton Review. This sale never took place and the investors returned the company to Schechter's care. The price of services went 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 first $150, then $195, $295, and $495. In 2011 Edifi was faced with a national recession, increased air fares because of oil price increases, inability to raise prices further (price resistance), and the impracticality of automating an online application, as opposed to a paper FAFSA that came out of the computer printer in seconds. Maura Kastberg wanted to transfer FAFSA application data electronically, even before the FAFSA was put on line, but the Department of Education refused this. Faced with this situation, the company ceased selling new contracts, terminated most employees, moved back to Schenectady, and limited its activities to servicing contracts which had already been sold. As of 2015 it is out of business, and no longer has a Web site.References
{{Reflist Student financial aid in the United States Education finance in the United States Defunct education companies of the United States Companies based in Albany County, New York Education in Albany County, New York 1991 establishments in Massachusetts