Target 4.3: Affordable technical, vocational, tertiary education
By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Tertiary and vocational access is set by public funding and tuition policy. Publicly traded for-profit colleges, online program managers and lenders influence affordability and quality at the margin. Lobbying by for-profit education operators against accountability rules is the main political-influence channel. Investors have used proxy tools in the sector. SEIU trusts filed lobbying-disclosure proposals at Stride Inc. in 2021 and 2023, citing indirect lobbying through ALEC and school-choice advocacy groups. Stride's career-learning segments sit in the vocational space. Owners can vote for lobbying transparency but cannot deliver affordable public tertiary education themselves, so they help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Stride, Inc. stockholder proposal regarding a report on lobbying, SEIU Pension Plans Master Trust via SEC EDGAR, 2023-10-30
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Stride, Inc. stockholder proposal regarding a report on lobbying, SEIU Benefit Plans Master Trust via SEC EDGAR, 2021-11-15
1 campaign on record
Disclose the policies and procedures governing Stride's lobbying, the payments it makes for direct, indirect and grassroots lobbying, its memberships in and payments to tax-exempt organizations that write and endorse model legislation, and the board and management decision making behind those payments.
Result: Item 5 at the annual meeting of 7 December 2023. The proposal was not approved: 17,857,527 votes for, 18,249,329 against, 542,640 abstentions and 1,979,998 broker non-votes.
Not approved, and narrowly: votes against exceeded votes for by 391,802 shares out of 36,106,856 cast for and against, about 49.5 percent support.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.