March 12, 2008
Options Abound to Outsource Services for Students
Boston — The bustling exhibit hall at the Naspa conference here revealed the increasing number of student services a college can outsource.
Beyond dormitory furniture and college-branded weekly planners, vendors hawked emergency text-message systems, alcohol-prevention programs, enrollment software, and laundry services.
It was hard to walk by any booth without being subjected to an eager pitch, which left some campus officials shaking their heads.
“It’s opportunistic,” said Michael Heflin, associate director of residence life at Buffalo State College. “These companies come up with things to make money off of.”
Many of the products and services are important, he said, but the outsourcing trend leaves less to a campus’s own administrators. “It’s almost taking the people out of it,” he said.
One vendor defended himself against charges of opportunism. ““We’re not just going to exploit higher education,” said Drew Chadwick, a former judicial-affairs officer who now sells related software for Pave Systems. “We’re looking for partnerships.”
Just then a campus staffer approached the booth and pointed to one of Mr. Chadwick’s displays. “This’ll knock out the Clery reports, right?” he asked, referring to the campus-crime statistics federal law requires colleges to submit.
The vendor assured him it would. “Well, there’s at least one module I want,” the customer said, grabbing a brochure and darting away.
Here’s a sampling of products and services promoted in the exhibit hall.
- Rave Wireless lets students set cellphone timers that alert campus police if they do not arrive at their destinations. “We call it putting a blue-light telephone in everyone’s pocket,” said Robert Jones, Rave’s director of marketing.
- University Parent produces printed guides, Web sites, and electronic newsletters for college parents.
- OrgSync sells software to help student groups plan events and keep in touch with their members, even as leaders turn over.
- Lifetopia tells colleges it will help them “put people in their place” — with a Web site where students can create profiles and select their own roommates.
- CourseScheduler offers software to help students choose classes at hours they can handle. Otherwise “they’re just going to slap something together” — at the risk of burning out if their schedules are unmanageable, said Michael Smyers, a recent graduate of Kansas State University who founded the company.
- With Snoozester, students can request wakeup and reminder calls, such as to start studying for a test a week in advance. This product particularly frustrated some administrators. “People have just stormed away,” said Neville Mehra, the company’s chief executive. But most absences from class, he said, are a result of oversleeping.
Comments
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Sara (and readers),
Thanks for the mention in your blog post. To clarify, while we did have some frustrated student personnel admins storm away, the overall reaction we saw was overwhelmingly positive. The conference generated hundreds of good leads for us, and we even had student affairs professionals from a few universities who seemed ready to sign up on the spot.
With any new technology, there is always some resistance at the beginning. There is a mentality that says, “I managed to get by without all of these advantages, so why do these students need them?”
Eventually, they all come around. When was the last time you rode your horse to work or did math on an abacus?
— Neville Mehra Mar 14, 02:48 PM #