FAQs

  • We partner with leaders in schools, institutions of higher education, and education-focused organizations who are responsible for stewarding mission-driven work and making thoughtful decisions about impact, effectiveness, and strategy.

    Across these contexts, partners share a desire to better understand the quality and impementation of their work, articulate their outcomes and value, and use evidence to guide future direction.

  • Partners often come to us with questions that span both the present moment and how programs, experiences, and outcomes evolve over time, particularly when leaders are preparing to make important decisions. These questions often include:

    • What are the outcomes of this program, initiative, or strategy, and what helps explain those results?

    • How are students, families, and educators experiencing our work, and where, for whom, and why do those experiences align or diverge from our intentions?

    • How well do implementation and outcomes reflect our mission, stated priorities, and values, and where are there meaningful gaps?

    • How is the value of our work understood across the community, and what claims can we responsibly make about its impact?

    • What evidence should meaningfully inform an upcoming strategic decision, investment, or shift in direction, and what evidence should not?

    We help partners clarify the questions that matter most, design inquiry that fits their context, and make sense of findings in ways that support leadership judgment, strategic tradeoffs, and action.

  • Market research and enrollment strategy consultants typically study perceptions and trends in order to improve recruitment, retention, messaging, or positioning.

    Wasatch Education Group plays a different role. We partner with schools and organizations when leaders want credible and rigorous evidence about the quality and impact of their programming. Our work is designed to provide leaders with evidence they need to inform high-stakes decisions, align strategy with mission, and communicate these insights with boards, accreditors, and communities.

    In practice, this means we are often brought in when questions extend beyond marketing or enrollment and require deeper sense-making, such as:

    • How well an initiative or strategy is being implemented

    • How we know we are achieving our mission and strategic priorities

    • How participants experiences and outcomes vary across groups or over time

    • Whether widely held assumptions are supported by evidence

    • How to assess and communicate impact

    We do use methods like surveys, interviews, and focus groups, but the difference is not the tools — it’s the purpose, rigor, and use of the findings. Our role is to help leaders understand what is true enough to stand behind before deciding what to do next.

  • Many partners are doing meaningful work but struggle to clearly describe its impact or effectiveness. We help organizations examine what they are trying to achieve, how success is defined, and what evidence best reflects their value.

    In addition to working with existing data, we often support partners in gathering new evidence through careful engagement with stakeholders — including interviews, observations, and other qualitative approaches that surface lived experience and perception. This allows organizations to understand value across different stages of the student or participant journey and to connect program-level insights to broader strategic goals, value propositions, and conversations with boards or funders.

  • We don’t offer fixed packages. Each engagement is designed in response to a partner’s specific questions, context, and decision-making needs.

    That said, our work often includes familiar components — such as qualitative inquiry, surveys, data analysis, facilitation, or strategic sense-making — which we scope clearly and transparently during early conversations.

  • Most engagements begin with a discovery phase focused on clarifying goals, questions, and constraints. From there, we design and carry out an inquiry tailored to the organization’s context and timeline. Throughout the process, we stay in close communication and prioritize shared interpretation and reflection, not just final deliverables.

  • Timelines vary based on scope and complexity. Some engagements are relatively focused and short-term, while others span an academic year or longer. We work with partners to align timelines with key decision points and organizational rhythms.

  • Our work is scoped and priced based on the nature of the questions being explored, the methods required, and the timeline for decision-making. As a result, fees can range from focused, short-term engagements to more comprehensive, multi-year projects.

    We discuss budget early and collaboratively, with the goal of designing work that is both rigorous and realistic for the organization.

  • We see inquiry as part of an ongoing learning process. Many partners ask us to support reflection, planning conversations, or next-step decision-making after findings are shared. Our goal is to help organizations use what they learn — not simply receive a report.