Ascent, an innovative lending organization that is focused on not just helping students pay for school but to plan, pay and succeed well beyond their education; Goal Beyond, a non-profit with the mission to create the ecosystem enabling all learners to access a quality education and employers to source talent in a rapidly evolving labor market; and Riipen, an experiential learning marketplace, are partnering to build innovative, systemic change in setting students up for success, and measuring the long- and short-term outcome. This dynamic team is coming together to invest in students’ education, deliver necessary training on durable skills, secure valuable field experience through by offering micro-internships, increasing their FICO scores, and seeing them secure jobs that create financial independence through a partnership, funded by Goal Beyond.
Thought this program, Ascent borrowers apply to the Ascent Internship Program and are required to take courses on durable skills training including professionalism, communication, goal and expectation setting, and more. Once they gain the critical skills to succeed, the Ascent borrowers gain access to a set of pre-vetted internship experiences via Riipen. We know that graduates who start out in a college-level job rarely slide into underemployment, as the vast majority of them (79 percent) remain in a college-level occupation five years after graduation. Through our experiential learning, learners will gain the experience that is often the hardest to get: the first internship that sets the trajectory of your future career.
On this panel, we will address the critical and systemic issues we are solving including underemployment rates among recent college graduates, disparities in employment outcomes based on race and gender, and the skills gap between employers and graduates.
We understand the systemic shifts don’t happen overnight or alone. This unique partnership between a nonprofit, an innovative and stable financial lender, and SaaS employer-to-student marketplace addresses what no one else has been able to, taking the step beyond surface level solutions and making seismic and scalable shifts, and re-establishing the responsibilities of the role of a traditional student lender.
