School prep software program Naviance sells promoting knowledge on tens of millions of scholars

For almost two-thirds of American excessive schoolers Naviance software program is an integral and almost unavoidable a part of the school analysis and software course of. For schools and universities, it’s additionally a focused promoting platform with a captive viewers of tens of millions of scholars trying to make one of many largest monetary investments of their lives.

The Markup examined the Naviance accounts of a number of college students who granted us entry and reviewed contracts between 10 universities and Intersect, a sister firm to Naviance liable for promoting promoting campaigns on the platform. We uncovered how Naviance gathers knowledge via its school steering software program after which permits schools and universities to focus on college students with paid ads encouraging them to enroll. 

The platform permits admissions officers to pick out what sorts of scholars will see their recruiting messages primarily based on the scholars’ location, tutorial “capability,” the majors they’re considering, and even their race. In a single occasion, The Markup discovered a college that intentionally marketed solely to White college students via Naviance. A number of different faculties used the platform to focus on college students of all races in some states however solely White college students in others.

The software program has develop into ubiquitous within the school search course of. Greater than 10 million college students use it to submit their school purposes, request trainer suggestions, and submit transcripts. They analysis schools and universities utilizing Naviance’s SuperMatch function, which calculates a “match rating” designed to point out college students how properly aligned they’re with a selected faculty. 

They use the software program’s scattergram function to match their take a look at scores and GPAs to beforehand admitted college students from their very own highschool. They usually obtain messages via Naviance about faculties that is perhaps good matches for them.

A few of these messages, The Markup discovered, are literally paid ads from the faculties. 

“There’s some social engineering at play that feels actually regarding,” mentioned Ceceilia Parnther, a St. John’s College professor who research increased training management. “I see it being an digital type of gatekeeping.”

Naviance and Intersect are owned by PowerSchool and are key elements of an ed tech empire—largely owned by the non-public fairness agency Vista Fairness Companions—that’s exerting important affect over college students from kindergarten via school commencement. 

PowerSchool declined to reply lots of The Markup’s questions for this story, however in a short e mail, Darron Flagg, the corporate’s chief compliance and privateness officer, wrote that the function that permits schools to focus on college students with ads primarily based on their race was phased out in 2019—two years earlier than PowerSchool acquired the businesses. 

“The Intersect product doesn’t enable matching standards that excludes under-represented scholar teams,” Flagg wrote in an e mail.

That assertion is straight contradicted by paperwork The Markup obtained via public data requests.

College students The Markup spoke to for this story mentioned they felt misled and had usually been confused about why they had been receiving messages via Naviance from faculties wherein that they had expressed no curiosity.

“I believed the outcomes I used to be getting had been actually bizarre,” mentioned Alexandra Raphling, a senior at Santa Monica Excessive Faculty, in California. “They weren’t per my grades, they weren’t per what I put in [as search criteria].… It type of simply exhibits that Naviance doesn’t have one of the best curiosity of scholars utilizing the software program at coronary heart.”

Race-based ads

In August 2021, the College of California San Diego bought an promoting marketing campaign via Intersect that allowed it to ship focused messages via Naviance to college students who had used the platform to analysis competitor establishments—as designated by UC San Diego—and to “racial or ethnic minorities,” based on a contract obtained by The Markup.

The $142,000 contract features a marketing campaign that particularly targets “racial or ethnic minorities” in California who used Naviance to analysis the College of Southern California, Arizona State College, or UC Irvine.(See the paperwork right here.)

UC San Diego declined to remark.

The contract is ready to run till 2023. It was signed 5 months after PowerSchool acquired Naviance and two years after the race-based focusing on function was supposedly phased out.

The Markup obtained contracts displaying focused promoting campaigns from 9 different universities.

Along with their contracts, Metropolis Faculties of Chicago and Northern Illinois College supplied person manuals, copyrighted 2020, that designate how faculty officers can choose from “variety filters” when choosing which college students will see their recruiting advertisements. Metropolis Faculties of Chicago additionally supplied an Intersect demonstration video that exhibits a narrator choosing from an inventory of racial identities and unclicking a field labeled “American Indian or Alaska Native”—that means college students who determine as members of these teams wouldn’t obtain recruiting messages from the varsity.

The Intersect web site presently states that purchasers can use the service to “discover college students who match particular demographic variables (race, ethnicity, geography, class 12 months, attendance at an under-represented faculty) and current messages about your establishment to college students who possess these traits.”

When The Markup offered its findings to PowerSchool and requested about Flagg’s earlier feedback, spokesperson Madeline Willman wrote in an e mail, “PowerSchool stands by what has been supplied as factual.”

Contracts from the College of Kansas present how the focused promoting service the businesses market as a way to extend scholar physique variety can really be used to do the other.

In 2015, for instance, the college paid for a year-long Naviance promoting marketing campaign that focused solely White college students in Kansas, Texas, and Minnesota. 

That buy occurred earlier than PowerSchool acquired Naviance, however the College of Kansas continued to make use of Naviance-targeted advertisements via at the least June 2021. The later contracts don’t specify whether or not the varsity focused college students primarily based on race, and the College of Kansas didn’t reply to requests for remark.

In 2016, the College of Maine bought a Naviance marketing campaign that focused White, Black, and Hispanic college students in Massachusetts. However its advert campaigns in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont focused solely White college students, based on contracts obtained via public data requests. The college didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The identical 12 months, the College of Massachusetts Boston bought Naviance promoting aimed toward each White and “different” college students in New Jersey and New York. However in Connecticut and New Hampshire, it focused solely White college students. 

“UMass Boston makes use of many recruiting methods … to achieve high-school-aged college students with an intention towards rising variety in our scholar physique,” DeWayne Lehman, a spokesperson for the college, wrote in an e mail. He didn’t reply questions on why the college would goal solely White college students in sure states.

“You may just about not escape”

Many schools and universities have historically directed their ads utilizing lists of potential scholar names bought from the ACT and from the School Board, which administers the SAT. However fewer highschool college students are taking these standardized assessments.

In lots of locations, the assessments had been canceled due to COVID-19. And even earlier than the pandemic, universities had been adopting test-optional software insurance policies that didn’t require college students to submit take a look at scores. Consequently, faculties have been trying to find new sources of information to gasoline their advertising. 

EAB—which is owned by Vista Fairness Companions, the identical agency that holds a major stake in Naviance’s guardian firm, PowerSchool—is presently the unique reseller of Intersect’s focused promoting service. In its advertising materials, EAB has offered its entry to college students via Naviance as a approach for schools and universities to search out precious promoting leads and make up for the lack of knowledge from the ACT and SAT. “Unmatched Attain: Affect and Interact Prime Prospects by way of Naviance,” reads one current EAB advertising presentation.

Naviance says that greater than 10 million college students unfold throughout 40 % of U.S. excessive faculties use its companies. That’s about two thirds of the 15.3 million college students who had been enrolled in highschool in 2020, based on the U.S. Division of Training knowledge.

Some districts, like Pittsburgh Public Faculties, have made Naviance the obligatory cornerstone of their school and profession readiness packages. 

Starting in third grade, Pittsburgh college students should full at the least two classes or surveys tied to their Naviance account every year, based on a curriculum plan obtained via a public data request. In highschool, Pittsburgh college students are required to make use of Naviance’s SuperMatch school search function, request supplies from faculties via the platform, and add at the least one faculty to their “Faculties I’m Making use of to” checklist, based on the doc.

Pittsburgh Public Faculties didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The surveys ask college students to answer prompts like “It is vitally vital to me that different folks see me as a profitable particular person” and “I like to guide and persuade folks and promote issues and concepts.” In some circumstances, college students take the surveys as soon as in center faculty and usually are not allowed to alter their solutions at any level sooner or later. In its person manuals for college kids, Naviance encourages college students to make use of the survey outcomes to find out their profession targets and course plans.

Some districts, like Ann Arbor Public Faculties, additionally use Naviance to manage their very own customized surveys about college students’ post-high-school plans. They ask college students to reply questions like “How are you planning on paying for faculty?”—data that might be precious to varsities contemplating which potential recruits to focus their recruiting efforts on.

The Markup didn’t discover any proof that Naviance was utilizing college students’ survey solutions to assist goal ads. 

Youngsters and oldsters in a number of districts advised The Markup that their faculties required college students to make use of Naviance to take profession aptitude surveys, request trainer suggestions, submit purposes, and analysis schools, even when that they had already recognized the faculties they meant to use to.

“To be able to graduate, you’ll be able to just about not escape the usage of Naviance,” mentioned Cassie Creswell, a Chicago guardian.

That stage of attain has made the platform extremely engaging for faculties like New Jersey Metropolis College, one of many establishments that pays Intersect for promoting companies, which can be competing for a shrinking quantity of potential college students.

Jose Balda, NJCU’s director of admissions, mentioned that 382 freshmen—greater than a 3rd of the varsity’s incoming class in 2020—related with NJCU via Naviance (though that will not have been the one approach they found the college).

“That is basically giving college students the chance so as to add us to their buying checklist,” Balda mentioned.

A former Naviance account govt, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to guard his present job, put it a special approach: “It’s a pay to play type of concept, and I don’t assume mother and father know that, however all the colleges knew that.”

Empowering college students

The previous worker mentioned that, regardless of the disguised promoting, he believes Naviance supplies a precious service to many college students, particularly those that have fewer assets or much less familial expertise with the school search course of.

PowerSchool says Naviance empowers college students with knowledge that helps them make knowledgeable choices about their post-high-school plans and instruments to comply with via on these plans.

Analysis into college students’ use of Naviance means that elevated use of the software program correlates with will increase in school software charges, however its final results are sophisticated.

In 2020, Christine Mulhern, then a Harvard College training researcher, investigated the scattergram charts that Naviance shows to college students as they analysis schools. The charts present college students how their GPA and take a look at scores examine to friends from their faculty who had been accepted by a selected school.

Mulhern discovered that college students had been 20 % extra prone to apply to a school in the event that they first noticed a Naviance scattergram depicting the grades and take a look at scores of beforehand admitted college students. Different analysis has additionally proven that elevated use of Naviance correlates with increased school software charges.

Viewing scattergrams had a selected impression on college students of coloration, correlating with elevated four-year-college enrollment charges for college kids who’re Black, Hispanic, or obtained free or decreased lunch, Mulhern discovered. However the research additionally confirmed that these college students who seen Naviance scattergrams had been “much less prone to apply to achieve schools and extra prone to attend a security faculty” and that “it’s most likely not optimum for college kids to reply so strongly to admissions alerts” just like the GPA and take a look at scores that the scattergrams present. 

One other research, performed by College of California Irvine professor Roderic Crooks, examined how college students in a Los Angeles highschool that was 94 % Latino and 6 % Black responded to the introduction of Naviance and a college mandate that they use the platform to use to at the least 4 schools.

He discovered that college students rebelled towards software-enabled surveillance of the appliance course of, in some circumstances importing faux purposes to Naviance as a way to meet their quotas and keep away from expulsion.

“On the stage of the varsity, on the stage of the person, I feel the advantages are fairly restricted,” Crooks mentioned in an interview. “The advantages accumulate elsewhere.… Naviance wound up with this mountain of information via its actions that then grew to become a saleable, actionable asset. As soon as these channels for aggregating knowledge are created, then you definitely begin to see the businesses pivot and begin to be about one thing else.”

This text was initially printed on The Markup and was republished underneath the Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.