Defining Education Assistance

Easy, right?

As we mentioned last week, our recent workshops with our clients on education benefits policies have yielded a series of blogs in which we will address some of the topics that were of primary interest to our clients.

First up is the very definition of “education assistance” and the need for all parties involved to be clear on terms that are inherently vague such as “assistance” or “support.”

As is the case with many highly specialized fields, in Global Mobility there are many policy terms for which there is no universal, standardized definition. Each employer has its own nomenclature, reflective of its unique culture, history, and practice.

For example, a cursory review of corporate mobility policies presents us with a wide variety of terms for employees who relocate at the request of their employer, including: expatriates, transferees, assignees, globally mobile employees, secondees, third-country nationals, etc. This lack of standardization can make the understanding and comparing (benchmarking) of policies a real challenge.

Another example is the term “education assistance” as it pertains to the provision of support for the schooling of employees’ children. Mobility policy surveys often ask: “Does your organization provide education assistance, Y/N?” but the answer to that specific question tells us virtually nothing of value without a clear definition of the term.

There are countless variations and gradations of policy, but it’s helpful to think of “education assistance” in terms of two separate but often conflated concepts:

—Financial support such as an allowance or reimbursement to address schooling costs

—Guidance & advice from a consultant for the family regarding assignment-related education issues and questions

Understanding these two concepts as distinct and different is essential and can have a real impact on mobility budgets.

The first—financial support via allowance or reimbursement—is often what first springs to mind when education assistance is mentioned. And it’s easy to understand why such a benefit is often reserved for senior executives. When all of the fees and related expenses are included, the cost of international schools in a place like New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo can range from $50-$70,000 per student per year. When the tax costs over a four-year assignment are included, an employer is facing education costs close to $400,000 for one student.

The second type of assistance—guidance & advice—involves having a qualified education professional guide a family on a broad swath of issues, from available schools in the host location to questions of curriculum, repatriation requirements, or Special Education Needs. This type of benefit would typically be less than 2% of the four-year assignment education costs outlined above.

In our conversations with some of our corporate clients, what we learned was that:

 #1 “Education Assistance” meant primarily Category 1—financial support for school tuition; understandably, therefore, there was concern over the high cost of international schools.   

#2 Because these two types of assistance are often lumped together as one policy element, professional guidance & advice is rarely available on its own to lower-level employees, despite its relatively low cost.

A few comments from us:

Whether you use Bennett or another education consulting firm, we suggest increasing #2 in order to sometimes lessen #1. 

To be clear: there are many instances when a relocating child needs a private or international school, and there’s really no appropriate alternative; a return to university in home country or barriers to entry in the host location may mean that an IB diploma or a private school is really the only option.  In such instances, the only viable approach is to enable the student to enroll in the program that meets their needs, and our client colleagues were in total agreement about this.

There are other times, however, when a family might happily consider a local school for their child if they can be reassured by a professional that such a decision won’t put their child at a disadvantage in the future.  Perhaps they like the idea of their child learning a new language or going to school with local peers, but their colleagues are all choosing international schools, so they feel they should do the same thing. With the support and guidance of a professional education consultant, many parents are not only willing, but eager, to consider more options if they can be reassured that it’s not an irresponsible approach.

So, as you think about your education policy, and whether you use Bennett or a different consultancy (admittedly, we have a bias as to who will do the best by you), we encourage you to consider professional support for relocating employees choosing a school.

Of course, we believe that some level of professional assistance is a good idea for employees of all levels-- by providing expert guidance, the employer decreases the amount of time, effort, and emotional energy that the employee must devote to this important task and ultimately increases the odds of assignment success.

And for those employees entitled to financial assistance for tuition costs—or those willing to foot the bill on their own—access to a qualified, unbiased advisor not only increases the chances of finding the best-fit school for their children; it often increases their willingness to consider a broader range of school options. Otherwise, transferring employees may select a school based on limited information, sometimes word of mouth or perceived prestige, rather than on the academic and cultural fit the school offers their child. Having the input of a professional education consultant can prove crucial in making the right decision.

Whatever way you approach them, it's important to recognize that these two aspects of “education assistance” serve different purposes and entail very different price points. So, as you consider policy, think about how the two relate and how you wish to weight them. Sometimes, investing in one can drastically decrease the other.

With thanks & best regards,

Timothy Dwyer, President

Over the years, Bennett International Education Consultancy has worked with hundreds of corporations across the globe, many of them Fortune 500 companies, providing domestic and international school advisement & placement services - preschool through university - to the dependents of relocating employees. In addition to education placement, our team provides customized consulting for corporations with a range of education issues: education policy writing & benchmarking, tuition studies, group move advisement & planning, and remote education solutions.