Shai Reshef Named to UN Body of Advisors

Shai Reshef, President and Founder of Uiversity of the People, a global, tuition-free online university, has been named to a United Nations group of advisors on technology policy.

From his newsletter:

The United Nations' Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID) has invited Shai Reshef to its High-level Panel of Advisers. Reshef joins a group of distinguished practitioners, policymakers and experts recognized in their respective fields who contribute to and support the mission and objectives of GAID to provide a platform for open and inclusive policy dialogue on the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in development.

The University begins open enrollment on April 27, 2009.

A Loan Sticking Point Clarified and Accentuated

Recently, Mark Kantrowitz, Founder, Finaid Pages, documented solutions in the loan market for post secondary education.

Mary Lyn Hammer, CEO, Champion College Solutions, wrote into point out a detail in Mr. Kantrowitz's presentation:

During a session at last week’s IIR conference in Phoenix, a statement was made that schools could voluntarily withdraw from the Federal Student Loan Programs and remain in the Pell Grant and other Title IV Programs. This statement was inaccurate. The following is documentation for your review.

Voluntary Withdrawal from Loan Program and Retain Pell Eligibility

In the 1998 Higher Education Amendments, Title IV, Part A, Sec. 401 (f) (2) it states, “This subsection shall not apply to an institution that was not participating in the loan program authorized under part B or D on the date of enactment of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, unless the institution subsequently participates in the loan programs.”

This is further defined in the Official Cohort Default Rate Guide as, “A school will not be subject to loss of Federal Pell Grant Program eligibility if a school officially withdrew (in writing) from the FFEL Program and/or Direct Loan Program on or before October 7, 1998 OR lost its eligibility to participate in the FFEL Program and/or Direct Loan Program on or before October 7, 1998 OR did not certify any FFEL Program and/or Direct Loan Program loans on or after July 7, 1998.”

Summary:

The voluntary withdrawal option was statutory and only available if the school made no loans on or after July 7, 1998 and voluntarily withdrew from the Federal Student Loan Programs on or before October 7, 1998.

Mr. Kantrowitz responds:

As I said at the conference, if a school is close to the limits but not over, they can preserve Pell Grant eligibility by withdrawing from the federally(sp) loan programs. The voluntary withdrawal program was regardless of whether the school was over the cohort default rate limit. What I was discussing is schools that are close to but not over the limit, but so close that they are concerned that they might lose eligibility.

An example might help illustrate. Let's suppose that a college is at 14% now and will be at 28% after the change. Right now they don't have any problems vis a vis the 25% threshold, but after the change to a 3 year window they may be very close to the 30% threshold. If they were concerned that they might go over the limit in the future, they could choose to stop offering federal education loans. So long as they were under the 30% threshold for one of the next three years, they wouldn't be subject to sanctions and so could continue to offer the Pell Grant. I am assuming that the number of loans entering repayment would rapidly drop below the 30 loan minimum.

Or consider a school that is at 20% now. They know that they will be over the 30% threshold and have no way of getting under it. If they opt out now, by the time the threshold goes into effect they will no longer have enough loans entering repayment to affect eligibility.

So while there is no formal voluntary withdrawal program now, schools can still manipulate the cohort default rate definition to opt out to preserve Pell Grant eligibility.

Ahmed Abdulwahab, CEO, inetoo

Ahmed Abdulwahab tells the Education Industry Investment Forum that he hopes that inetoo, an online collaborative study tool, can be taken up by more students across the country.

NT, CEO and Founder, Tabula Digita

NT went from a young man armed with an idea, to a young man building a success story in the gaming and electronic learning space. Listen to how he describes to The Education Industry Investment Forum the philosophy that kept his goals in sight and helped him build a business out of conviction.

You can visit NT's site and vision at Tabula Digita.

Randy Speck, CEO, mySamson

Randy Speck, CEO of mySamson, came to the FuturEd Symposium portion of the 11th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum to meet investors and other business owners who would teach him new things about building scale and solving distribution challenges in the industry. He believes he will be taking away ideas and contacts that will boost his efforts in the industry.

Jordan Goldman, CEO and Founder, Unigo.com

The youngest entrepreneur at the Education Industry Investment Forum, Jordan Goldman discusses "filters of perception" and how a social networking site called Unigo, run primarily by students, will change the way colleges and universities sell themselves to the next generation of students.

In essence, students will decide how students will be marketed to, in the post secondary space and you can see how they are doing it at at Unigo's web site.

Rita Ferrandino, Managing Director, ARC Capital Development

NCLB is on the mind of Rita Ferrandino of ARC Capital Development as she discusses what she came to the forum to learn and what she eventually will take back to her company. She believes the industry will see an NCLB Reauthorization in 2010.

You can visit ARC Capital Development here.

Malgosia Green, CEO, LearnHub

Malgosia Green, one half of the duo that runs LearnHub, a distance learning platform for Indian students learning in English, explains how she went from being a top engineering student in Canada to working as one of the top businesswomen in the start-up genre of the online education industry.

You can visit LearnHub right here.

Howard Block, Knowledge Investment Partners

I talked with Howard Block after his speech at the Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix. Mr. Block is always good for a direct and dramatic commentary.

You can visit Knowledge Investment Partners here

The Movement Toward The Affect In K-12 Education

Steve Weigler, CEO, of ScholarCentric and speaker at next week’s Education Industry Investment Forum recently forwarded us his latest white paper, The Movement Toward The Affect In K-12 Education. In this paper Steve explores the following:

• The Change in Educational Landscape Spurred by a Dropout Crisis
• Financial Opportunities/Analysis
• ScholarCentric’s Approach to The Emerging Affective Market

Take a couple of minutes to read through the whitepaper, as we are all trying to make sense of things to come with Obama’s new focus on education. Enjoy!

Read the white paper

Entrepreneurs' Roundtable Helmed By Keith Oelrich, Insight Schools

With only one week to go before the opening day of the 11th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum, the final tallies are in and the new entrepreneurs have been chosen. We also have a moderator. and here they are.

9:40 Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Biltmore Resort & Spa

The Entrepreneur’s Panel – Five Companies that May Change the Education Industry

Keith Oelrich,Founder and CEO of Insight Schools, will moderate a panel of five well-chosen entrepreneurs, who will present their conceptions and strategies for navigating the education industry in today's economy.

Mr. Oelrich, who once helmed Speedyclick.com, will take these five entrepreneurs through a course of questions:

Brian Boubek, CEO, CEA Global Education
Louis Piconi, CEO, Apangea Learning
Jeff Shelstad, CEO, Flat World Knowledge
Steve Weigler, CEO, ScholarCentric
Randy Speck, CEO, MySamson

Sign up now to listen to this conversation at the FuturEd Symposium, by visiting our registration page at registration page. You only have six more days!

You can also join our LinkedIn Group and speak with over 170 for-profit education professionals in American and abroad.

Mayor's Schools Fail the Pass Test

Two schools created as part of the Bloomberg administration’s effort to replace large, failing high schools with collections of small ones have been added to the state’s list of failing schools.

But for the grace of Mayor Bloomberg there go I.

Obama's State of the Union: Are You Ready to Go Back To School?

The core of the for-profit education industry can benefit from doing more to interact with the government over new provisions that will fund education and distribute money to agencies, institutions, colleges, charter schools and school districts that need to grow, that need to become more efficient, and that need, most critically, to raise the standard of education and boost graduation rates. And don't forget addressing the 90/10 Rule, lending standards, and the crucial issue of rule making.

The President himself said that it's time for the nation to go back to school:

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

Tom Netting from Jefferson Government Relations will be addressing the subject of what the US$100 billion set aside for education will mean for your business. He is joined by Michael Musante, Director -- Government Relations, Edison Learning.

Tuesday, March 10, 9.55AM

Refining Capital Strategies to Address Changes to the Higher Education Act’s Student Financing Requirements

• How will the 90/10 rule alter the way schools grow and change
their business in 2009 and 2010?
• Ensuring proper growth and scale of domestic for-profit education
based in America to sustain the economy and address immediate
crises in student financing needs
• Strategizing to address the HEA reauthorization that focuses
on expanding the default observation window to ensure tuition
payment and stable value of degree program
• Earmarking techniques to raise tuition in a narrow band under more
increased scrutiny, diversifying and expense control

Michael Musante, Director – Government Relations,
Edison Learning

Tom Netting, Vice President, Jefferson Government Relations

FAFSA and the Angst of Getting Aid for College

The FAFSA application has become the bane of the education industry. It's complexity has become so frustrating that some students give up in filling it out. Companies have taken shape that actually do the application for people. And there is talk now in the Obama Administration of changign the form, following the lead of former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to make it a simple three pages document that you can finish in twenty or thirty minutes. Not six hours!

More of that in the article about FAFSA that you and your colleagues should read.

Jordan Goldman, Founder, Unigo

Jordan Goldman will be speaking at the 11th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix, Arizona on March 11.

His company, Unigo, the free site for student-created school reviews, is also written about at The Wall Street Journal.

Goldman will sit in conversation with John Katzman, founder of Princeton Review anjavascript:void(0)d new venture 2Tor, to discuss the future of social networking as a marketing tool and its impact on the publishing industry. You can read more about the event at at our homepage. Make sure to check out the list of over 80 speakers!

But back to Goldman, who I hope to catch for five minutes at the conference to video interview...

Walt Mossberg writes:

I've been testing Unigo, and I like it. In the sampling of college profiles I read, the site seems to have struck a good balance between the immediacy and candor of student submissions, and the professionalism needed to weed out wildly biased or inaccurate claims.

The site, founded by a 26-year-old who formerly created printed college guides, says it employs 19 full-time editors. This team uses information from a nationwide network of 300 representatives on campuses to create each college's profile. Each representative rounds up contributions from others on campus, so that the site claims that over 15,000 students contributed to the profiles of the first 250 colleges.

I was a little unimpressed with the review. It didn't tell me anything new about the site, which I've already visited several times, even signing up during the beta testing.

The rest of Mossberg's article is just a "the good and the bad" piece and what he thinks about the site's potential. And even there, I'm left wondering. To me this seems like one of the more significant developments in online publishing, marrying a peer review model with a YouTube-like social networking function. The impact this would have internally at colleges and universities should be significant. I know that my alma mater,Wake Forest University didn't k now about it, and they had tried to launch their own version of this idea.

Does anyone in our audience use this site or have they checked it out? I'd like to know a bit more about your experience with Unigo, so please feel free to leave comments.