Federal Student Loan Outcomes Management

Your institutional CDR may not be showing you the real risk.

The Cohort Default Rate is calculated at the institutional level. It blends every program and major into a single number. Graduate programs, law schools, and medical programs pull that average down. Workforce programs, criminal justice, and non-clinical health professions can carry default rates two to three times the institutional average — and they net against each other in the CDR calculation.

The result is a CDR that looks manageable, sitting on top of a program cluster that may already be near or above the 30 percent sanction threshold.

Goal’s Programmatic Risk Concentration analysis breaks your CDR down to the CIP code level. We identify which programs are driving your risk, how concentrated that risk is, and what the trajectory looks like heading into the next cohort. We do this work at no cost, using your NSLDS delinquency file, before any commercial engagement begins.

We work across two windows of the borrower lifecycle. Most vendors operate in only one. Goal connects both — with a single reporting framework and a commercial model built entirely around outcomes.

• Omni-channel Outreach: Our contact strategy is driven by a proprietary BI system that scores each borrower for contact propensity, selects the optimal channel, and sequences outreach automatically. This is how we achieve right-party contact at three times the national benchmark.
• NSLDS-Native Workflow: Our reactive workflow is built around the NSLDS delinquency file. We receive updated file data, score and prioritize the population, and deploy outreach on the same cycle. Every borrower resolution is tracked at the individual account level and reported back to your institution.
• Performance-Based Model: Our commercial structure is built so that our revenue and your outcomes move together. You do not pay for activity, contact attempts, or counseling sessions. You pay when borrowers resolve. Ask us how it works.
• Higher Education Experience: Goal Solutions has supported colleges, universities, and career schools across the Title IV compliance landscape. We understand how institutions operate, how CDR calculations work, and what a sanctions trigger looks like in practice. This is not a service we retrofitted for higher ed. It was built for it.

• Performance-Based Pricing: You do not pay for effort. You do not pay for retainers or contact volume. Our pricing is tied directly to outcomes. Ask us how it works — the model is straightforward and the math usually surprises people.
• The Two-Window Advantage: Most vendors work one side of the borrower lifecycle. Goal works both — proactive Early Awareness before the first missed payment and reactive Default Prevention once the borrower appears in your NSLDS file. No other vendor integrates both windows into a single program with a single reporting framework.
• Programmatic Risk Concentration: We identify where your CDR risk is actually being created — at the program level, not the institutional level. This is the analysis that changes what you do next. And we do it before you sign anything.
• Higher Education Built-In: Goal Solutions has supported colleges, universities, and career schools across the Title IV compliance landscape. We understand how CDR calculations work, how sanctions exposure accumulates, and how institutions actually operate. This service was built for higher ed from the ground up.

Official Cohort Default Rates were 0.0% nationally for FY2020, FY2021, and FY2022 due to the federal payment pause. The FY2023 CDR will be the first cohort to reflect real repayment behavior since before the pandemic. Institutions operating from pre-pandemic CDR baselines are working with an incomplete picture.

Share your NSLDS delinquency file and Goal returns a full Programmatic Risk Concentration analysis — which programs are driving your risk, how concentrated that risk is, and what your CDR trajectory looks like at current delinquency rates. We do this at no cost, under standard data handling protocols, before any commercial relationship begins.