Arizona State University in Phoenix is moving to a new constituent relationship management system in an effort to increase enrollment of international and non-resident students.
Starting in August, Bellevue College in Washington added a service that enables its bookstore shoppers to compare the price of alternative sources for textbooks and even buy them from the online store of their choosing. The comparison also includes estimated shipping costs.
An effective service catalog serves multiple roles: to steer users to the appropriate resource, to communicate to the campus what IT does, and to help IT stay within its own capabilities.
Blackboard's payment card program is gaining traction among institutions of higher education. The company just went public about two schools--Bradley University in Peoria, IL and Salt Lake Community College--that have signed on for BlackboardPay.
Each state has its own regulations pertaining to education services offered in their state by out-of-state institutions. Some distance education providers will not be able to comply with every state's regulations, choosing instead not to serve students from those states where they find it too difficult or impossible to obtain the state's authorization. WCET and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association recently surveyed institutions regarding their approaches to state regulations--concluding it's the students who may suffer.
Hobsons and iParadigms have partnered to add plagiarism checking to the higher education online application process.
Two of the biggest players in the education space have gone all in with their chips in a game not of their making. SunGard Higher Education, which became one of the largest companies in the segment, is being acquired from SunGard Data Systems in a $1.775 billion dollar deal by the same private equity firm that owns Datatel, another major education behemoth.
As a next step in its multi-year strategic technologies initiative, Pacific Lutheran University will begin using a new set of tools to crank up results of its recruitment and enrollment efforts.
Kentucky Community & Technical College System has hired the services arm of Blackboard to help redesign its processes for delivering services and support to students as part of major efforts to improve student retention, streamline operations, and reduce expense.
Workday, which offers software-as-a-service programs for human resources, payroll, and finance--has just announced versions of its services specifically for colleges and universities.