PESC is pleased to announce its Fall 2005 Workgroup Summit, October 11-12, 2005 in Atlanta, GA at the Sheraton Atlanta. Summit information includ-ing registration information is posted on the PESC website, www.PESC.org!.The tentative agenda is as follows:

Tuesday October 11, 200510:00am - 11:30am PESC Membership Meeting11:30am - 1:00pm PESC Membership Luncheon1:00pm - 3:00pm Concurrent Workgroup Meetings

- High School Transcript- Student Aid Inquiry

3:00pm - 3:30pm Break3:30pm - 5:00pm Concurrent Workgroup Meetings

- Degree Audit Request and Response- Admission Application

5pm - 6pm PESC Reception

Wednesday October 12, 20057:30am - 8:30am Continental Breakfast8:30am - noon Concurrent Workgroup Meetings

- Higher Education Data Model- Data Transport

Noon - 1:30pm Lunch1:30pm - 4:30pm General Sessions

- PESC Update- Steering Committee Update- Workgroup Updates

the Standard page 1the Standard page 1

Inside

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council ~ www.PESC.org

PESC Fall 2005 Workgroup Summit Announced

StandardThe

news and commentary on technology and standards in postsecondary education

� Technology Tidbits & StandardsSnippets (p. 2)

� PESC featured in Recruitment andRetention Newsletter (p. 3)

� The Value of Standards (p. 4)

� Department of Defense identitymanagement system (p. 12))

Volume 4 ~ Issue 4 ~ June 2005

Student Aid Inquiry Workgroup LaunchesChaired by Tim Cameron, Project Manager for Meteor, and DougJabbour, Director of Strategic Relations for ELM Resources, thisworkgroup kicked off through a conference call held on June 15,2005. With 36 participants on the intital conference call, this work-group is off to a great start! Minutes from this first meeting areattached on page 5 along with details on the next call date and time.

One Dupont Circle, Suite 520Washington, D.C. 20036

Executive DirectorMichael SessaSessa@PESC.org

EditorHeidi L. Weberhlweber59@verizon.net

The Standard is the electronic newsletter published monthlyby The Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC).The Standard covers news and events that impact informa-tion technology and data exchange; and promotes PESC’sgoals of improving service, controlling costs, and attaininginteroperability within higher education. For informationabout subscriptions, advertising, and article submissions,please visit www.PESC.org. © 2004 PESC

� Google is offering coders up to$4,500 to work on projects for dif-ferent open source groups.Programmers can apply to the“Google Summer of Code” initia-tive through a sponsoring opensource organization. Project ideascome from Google as well as opensource groups, including: ThePython Software Foundation, ThePerl Foundation, The ApacheSoftware Foundation, UbuntuLinux, The Mono Project, TheGnome Foundation, The WineProject, The Subversion Project.Google has allocated funds for up to200 participants in the program,which, together with the mentororganization outlay, could total a $1million dollar cash infusion into theopen source community. For moreinformation, visit www.internet-news.com/devnews/article.php/3509211

� The University of Texas atAustin is clearing its undergraduatelibrary of nearly all books to makeway for computers and a coffeeshop. Transcripts from a live, onlinediscussion with Frances J. Maloy,president of the Association ofCollege and Research Libraries, aboutthe pros and cons of moving booksand journals out of libraries to makemore room for computers and tech-nology services, can be accessed athttp://chronicle.com/free/v51/i43/43a02701.htm.

� David Clark, leader of a year-long project financed by theNational Science Foundation, willtry to determine how computer sci-entists can create a new andimproved architecture for theInternet. Mr. Clark, a senior researchscientist at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, will ask computingexperts what they would do different-ly if they could rebuild the Internetfrom scratch. He expects, may wouldchoose to make the Internet moresecure.

� Microsoft has announced itsplan to use XML schemas in the

the Standard page 2

TechnologyTidbitsand Standards Snippets

UT Austin Internet Server‘SPEEDEs’ Along

May 2005 volume included:

� 71,493 TS130 transcriptsNew Record

� 51,031 TS131 acknowledgements

� 7,611 TS997 Functionalacknowledgements

� 21,090 TS189 AdmissionApplications

� 13,275 TS138 test score reports

� 186,043 total transactions

the Standard page 3

new “Microsoft Office Open XML Formats” for itsnext version of Microsoft Office. These “default”XML file formats are designed as an extension of theWordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML schemas andare intended to be interoperable with binary formats ofOffice 2000 and later. The ZIP package format sup-ports compression and error checking. For moreinformation, visit http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-06-02-a.html

� In 2004, nearly one million students nation-wide enrolled in courses that took place com-pletely online, according to a recent Eduventures’report. According to the report, about 937,000 stu-dents were enrolled in all-online education programsat the end of 2004. By the end of 2005, Eduventuresexpects more than 1.2 million students to be takingsuch courses, making up about 7 percent of the 17-million students enrolled at degree-granting institu-tions. The report is only available to Eduventures’clients.

� What are high school students looking for in acollege admissions Web site?” Students are lookingfor information on how they will fit on a campus,academically and socially,” says Judy Hingle,director of professional development at the NationalAssociation for College Admission Counseling.“Features like web cams, virtual campus tours, chat-ting with professors and students and information on

campus activities can help get a sense of what life islike.”

� Researchers at the University of Arizona havetaken a giant leap toward creating a computer thesize of a fingertip. The scientists have discovered away to use quantum mechanics to turn single mole-cules into working transistors — and now a Canadianresearch team reports doing the same thing by chemi-cal means.

� About 70 percent of applicants to the Universityof Michigan at Ann Arbor fill out their forms on theWeb, and half of prospective students at EasternMichigan University do the same. Administrators saythey’re happy with that development — because onlineapplications save paperwork, and because they can’t beplagued by bad penmanship.

� Too many colleges are budgeting barely ade-quate amounts for technology to improve their busi-ness processes, according to a Educause Center forApplied Research. The report, “Good Enough!Information Technology Investment and BusinessProcess Performance in Higher Education,” collectsthe results of a survey of 350 campus technology offi-cials. Many of the officials said they had no plans tochange their methods for making business decisions,even if they described their current practices as merelysatisfactory. To view the report, visitwww.educause.com.

� Wikis — communal Web sites that can be alteredby anyone who reads them — have been around foryears. But the only such site that most Web users arefamiliar with is Wikipedia, the popular group-editedencyclopedia.The next wiki to make a splash couldbe wikiHow. The site, which is four months old, col-lects the kind of information a group-run portalshould be good at presenting: how-to instructionson a wide range of topics. For more information, visithttp://wiredcampus.chronicle.com/2005/06/wikis_in_12_eas.html

� Educause and the Dartmouth PKI Lab are

PESC Featured in Recruitmentand Retention Newsletter

Therese Kattner, editor of Recruitment andRetention in Higher Education, a National On-Campus Report published by MagnaPublications, Inc., interviewed PESC’s ExecutiveDirector Michael Sessa. The result of that inter-view was published in the July edition of theirnewsletter beginning on page 9 of this edition ofthe Standard.

the Standard page 4

sponsoring a meeting focused on real-life PKIdeployment issues in higher education. The meetingwill allow attendees to benefit from the valuable tech-nical and policy experiences of others deploying client-side PKI in higher education; learn about andinfluence the implementation of higher educationinter-institutional PKI trust fabrics (HigherEducation Bridge Certification Authority and U.S.Higher Education Root); learn about Educause-negotiated PKI vendor deals; find out how PKIbridges can enable grid resource sharing; hear aboutthe federal government’s far-reaching end-user PKIdeployment plans; learn about differentCertification Authority options from those whohave successfully used them; and network with oth-ers who are deploying PKI in higher education andelsewhere. For more information, visit www.edu-cause.com.

� Enterprise portals have become the technologyof choice for providing users with a single webworkspace for handling and managing businessinformation and content. One starting point for a cus-tom- built portal is to use an open-source portal solu-tion. Many open-source portals provide capabilitiessuch as content management and collaboration. Toaccess an article discussing open-source portal prod-ucts, and review the pros and cons of using them,visit http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/1016

� A recent Java World article introducesService-Oriented Architecture (SOA), discusseswhy enterprises need SOA, what a service-orient-ed architecture is, and what comprises SOA infra-structure at the core, platform, andquality-of-services level. With a set of standards,SOA brings better reusability of existing assets orinvestments in the enterprise and lets you createapplications that can be built on top of new and exist-ing applications. To access the article, visithttp://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-06-2005/jw-0613-soa.html.

� The Association of American Publishers hasasked Google to stop scanning copyrighted books

until it can answer questions about whether thecompany’s planned scanning project complieswith copyright law, reports the Chronicle ofEducation. While not all libraries that Google willbe working worth is allowing the use of copyrightedmaterial, two, Michigan and Stanford, have agreedto let the company scan books that are still in copy-right. Google officials say the have not yet formallyresponded. In the related news, The University ofMichigan at Ann Arbor has released the details ofthe contract it signed with Google to digitize booksand allow the texts to be searchable online, accord-ing to The Chronicle. The contract says the agree-ment between the University of Michigan andGoogle must follow copyright law. “If at any time,either party becomes aware of copyright infringe-ment under this agreement, that party shall informthe other as quickly as reasonably possible,” thecontract states. It continues: “If either party reason-ably determines that a portion of the SelectedContent that was previously thought to be in thepublic domain is actually subject to copyright, thatparty shall promptly notify the other party in a writ-ing that particularly identifies the portion(s) andprovides an explanation for why the portion(s) arebelieved to be subject to copyright.” The contractfurther indicates that the university is not makingany money in the deal. The contract can be accessedon the University’s website athttp://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/index.html

The Value of StandardsStandards equal liquidity. This is the messagethat keynote speaker Tom Koulopoulos of Delphidelivered at the 2nd Annual Conference onTechnology and Standards. The report providessignificant insight into how organizations canbenefit from standards and the report is still avail-able on the conference homepage athttp://www.pesc.org/events/ACTS2/presenta-tions/standards.pdf.

Page 1 of 4

+Meeting Minutes

PESC Student Aid Inquiry WorkgroupJune 15, 2005

Participants:

1. Rhonda Allen, Sungard SCT2. Richard Allen, NYHESC3. Ron Bennett, FSA4. Rob Boisen, Great Lakes5. Tim Cameron, Meteor6. Cliff Clevenger, Sigma Systems7. Marion Dilbeck, Oklahoma8. Betty Ende, College Board9. Doug Falk, National Student Clearinghouse10. Cathy Fox, College Board11. Todd Froyland, Sungard Bitech12. Leonard Gude, University of S. Florida, NASFAA13. Elisha Harris, Oklahoma14. Anthony Humphreys, Datatel15. Doug Jabbour, ELM Resources16. Steve James, College Board17. Rick Johnson, NSLP18. Bob King, Citibank19. Jennifer Kim, PESC20. Wayne Kirby, South Carolina21. Rich Loftus, University System of Georgia22. Steve Margenau, Great Lakes23. Adele Marsh, AES24. Judy Martin, Pearson25. Lisa Matta, Columbia University26. Vicki McCright, Campus Management27. Shawn Monk, ASA28. Donna Parker, Pensacola Jr. College29. Jane Reny, VSAC30. Gary Sandler, ELM Resources31. Michael Sessa, PESC32. Cliff Smallwood, Campus Management33. Ruth Smith, NYHESC34. Ricky Steel, Oklahoma35. Will Thien, TGSLC36. Karl van Ness, College Board

Page 2 of 4

To kick off the workgroup call, Michael Sessa provided the team with an overview of thescope of the workgroup and the review process for the work product(s) created by theteam. A brief synopsis is as follows:

PESC would assist with community notification of the project to ensure widecommunity support and participation. This participation could include FSA,software vendors, schools, guarantors, lenders, loan servicers and other interestedparties. The interested parties will determine what the business needs are andwhat schemas should be developed.

Co-chairs will be selected from the group of interested community participants.The co-chairs will be responsible for scheduling the conference calls, laying outthe project plan, following the project plan, and providing written reports to thePESC Standards Forum Steering Committee.

All interested parties will work together to identify the necessary data elementsand negotiate the definitions and facets of each of the components.

Once the components are identified, they will be reviewed to determine if thecomponents exist in the XML Registry and Repository for the EducationCommunity. If the components exist, they will be reviewed to ensure that thepurpose and usage is consistent with the current component. If the componentsdo not exist or the purpose or usage is not consistent, then the communityworkgroup will recommend the definition of a new component.

Once that phase is completed, the components will be submitted to the PESCSubmission Advisory Board for review and approval. The PESC SubmissionAdvisory Board will then submit the components to the PESC Change ControlBoard for review and approval.

After the submission is approved, technical representatives from the communitywill build the schema.

The schema will be submitted to the PESC Submission Advisory Board forreview and approval. The PESC Submission Advisory Board will then submit thecomponents to the PESC Change Control Board for review and approval.

After the schema is approved, the new schema will undergo a 30-day communitycomment period. Community comments will be reviewed and changes made asnecessary.

Following the community review, the PESC membership will vote to accept thenew standard.

If the PESC membership votes to accept the new standard, then the PESC Boardof Directors will ratify the vote and release the necessary related documentation.

Page 3 of 4

Tim Cameron, Workgroup Co-Chair, provided the team with some backgroundinformation which led to NCHELP/Meteor submitting the request for PESC to form theworkgroup. He noted the following:

The Financial Aid community has realized the necessity of providing real-time inquiryaccess to student aid data. At the time the Meteor Project was started, an industry XMLstandard was just starting to emerge and Meteor used the standard as it existed at thattime. Although collaboratively developed, the XML standard for real-time inquiry ofstudent aid data as used by Meteor is not a fully accepted industry standard. It would bebeneficial to the financial aid community to collaboratively develop a student aid datainquiry XML standard.

Currently, student aid data is exchanged in a variety of proprietary formats. Theseinclude both XML and flat files. Some of the current processes include Meteor, NSLDS,ELMNet, and other proprietary processes implemented between business partners. It iscostly for organizations who participate in several of these processes to maintain each ofthese proprietary formats. By developing a student aid data inquiry XML standard,organizations will have the ability to leverage the development of common modules tosupport multiple processes. These types of standards also allow organizations toimplement changes more efficiently and cost effectively.

This collaboration would result in the development an XML standard to be used to alloworganizations the ability to respond to any type of student aid inquiry. The standardwould be built on the existing PESC Core Components and would include application,origination, disbursement, repayment, default and any other related student aid data thatthe participants would require.

Tim Cameron then proposed that the team form a matrix that identifies all of the dataelements currently being exchanged today between trading partners as it relates to studentaid inquiry processes. The team concurred that this would be a good starting point.Several organizations indicated that they would share their file formats that are currentlybeing used today to be included in the matrix. Those organizations are as follows:

• Campus Management (Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas,and Washington state reporting)

• College Board (PROFILE data layout)• ELMnet• Meteor• NSLDS• University of South Florida (Florida FSAG eligibility determination file,

Florida Program grade and hours layout, Florida Programs master eligibilitylist layout)

Page 4 of 4

Organizations are to submit these formats or a list of data elements to Tim Cameron byJuly 8, 2005. Tim will draft the first cut of the matrix by July 20, 2005 and the team willhave its next call on July 27, 2005 at 3:00pm Eastern, 2:00pm Central, 1:00pm Mountainand Noon Pacific. The focus of the next call will be to take a look at which data elementsbeing used today have already been defined by PESC. Those elements will not bereviewed. The team will focus the discussion on data elements not currently defined byPESC.

July 2005 | Vol. 19 No. 7

10 Predictions for the Adult Student Market

Many of the forces that will shape theadult learner market in the next

few years already exist, says the presi-dent of a company that specializes inhelping institutions recruit and retainadult students.

During the recent Magna Publicationsaudio conference “Marketing to AdultStudents: The Future is Already Here,”Carol Aslanian, president of AslanianGroup, Inc., detailed these trends andwhat they mean for the next decade.

Demographic trendsThe United States’ population is

increasing (largely due to immigration),and that means that the adult learningmarket is expanding. “We’re gainingpeople, and that’s good for education,”Aslanian said.

While 25 percent of adults in theUnited States have a bachelor’s degree,half of American adults have neverattended college, even though anincreasing number of jobs now requiresome sort of postsecondary credentials.As a result, many adults will be interest-ed in attending college for the first timeto stay employable, Aslanian said.

Adult students play a role in the cur-rent college enrollment boom. In thelast 25 years, college credit enrollmentgrew to 16.5 million from 8.6 million.For-credit enrollment is predicted to goas high as 18.2 million in 2013. (Aslaniansaid she hasn’t seen any data about non-credit enrollment, “but I can assure youit would be at least 16 million,” shesaid.)

High school graduation enrollment

can’t explain all of the college enroll-ment increases. High school enrollmentis projected to reach 3.1 million in 2012,up from 2.9 million in 1970. However,the number of adult college students isexpected to rise to 6.5 million in 2010from 2.4 million in 1970.

“Things are even better as we lookahead,” Aslanian said. We keep growingand growing, and there’s no end in sight.The question is, are you going to getyour fair share of this market?”

Motivation and needsAdult students are “utilitarian buy-

ers” looking to enter, advance in, orchange careers, Aslanian said.

“You don’t have to supply the motiva-tion. They know what they want. …

The Postsecondary ElectronicStandards Council launched a work-

ing group in late May to propose a for-mat for a standard, national XML highschool transcript.

The ultimate goal is to make process-ing admissions applications easier by cre-ating a common transcript languageamong high schools and postsecondaryinstitutions, said Michael Sessa, PESCexecutive director.

“Part of the issue right now is thatyou have how many thousands of highschools, how many thousands of col-leges,” he said. “And those high schoolsare sending in transcripts in whateverform they want.”

Paper transcripts and mismatchedelectronic formats not only cause pro-cessing delays, they make it hard for col-leges and universities to detect the“thousands of fraudulent documents fly-ing around,” Sessa said.

While HTML tags dictate how materi-al should appear on a Web page (in ital-ics or bold, for example), XML tagsdescribe what the material is (a phonenumber or a GPA, for instance), makingit easy for software to extract a specificdatum.

In 2004, PESC approved an XML for-mat for college transcripts. After that,“the need for an XML high school tran-

In This Issue3

State ApprovesFERPA Waiver Bill

5Institute Will Create

Retention Clearinghouse

7Race in Admissions: Two New Studies

Working Group Seeks Inputon XML Transcripts

➤ continued on page 2

➤ continued on page 4

[ PAGE 2 ]

Adults come back to school becausethey’re making some kind of lifechange.”

That life change doesn’t have to belarge or jarring; it can be whatever ren-ders an adult’s current skills inadequate,Aslanian said.

“Most of you fail in your advertise-ments [about adult programs] becauseyou talk about yourself and you don’ttalk about why they should come backto your place,” she said. Marketingshould describe the benefits of attendingyour institution, “and it better be relat-ed to their career aspirations,” she said.

Adult students tend to value conven-ience—the right time and location—morethan low cost, she said, even though 60percent of adult students finance theirown education.

“Location and schedule—there aren’ttwo factors more important,” she said.“This has turned into a client-centeredindustry.” Adult students want logisticaland administrative ease, including hassle-free admissions, registration, payment,advising, parking, and financial aid.

For example, suburbs are growingfaster than cities, and 60 percent ofadult students drive to school fromhome. As a result, a downtown locationmight not attract as many adult studentsas one located near residential areas.

It also appears that the demand forweekend programs is higher than thesupply: While 6 percent of adult stu-dents are enrolled in weekend programs,half of the remaining adults say theywould be interested in such a program,Aslanian said.

PredictionsAccording to Aslanian, the following

trends will exert greater influence onthe adult learning market over the nextfew years:

1) Life changes will continue to be theprimary reason adults enroll in post-secondary education.

“They’re there because they have tobe there,” she said.

2) More adult students will enroll incertificate programs or individualcourses, rather than degree programs.

The proportion of adult studentsenrolled in non-degree courses is about30 percent and will increase becausethese courses let adult students chooseonly what they need to fulfill theircareer objectives, Aslanian said.

“Breaking up larger programs intosmaller bites is a great way to attractolder students,” she noted.

About 30 percent of adult studentscurrently study full time; Aslanian pre-dicts that proportion will increase asmore institutions offer convenient pack-aging such as accelerated programs andonline classes.

3) More institutions will offer acceler-ated and fast-track learning.

About 25 percent to 30 percent ofadults are in accelerated programs, butAslanian asserts that this proportion willincrease.

“To adults, [accelerated programsare] a great offer,” she said. An accelerat-ed program could almost be called aform of financial aid, she said, becausestudents can complete it more quicklyto land a job or a promotion.

4) Institutions will provide moreonline instruction.

Adult students say they’d prefer class-room courses if they’re available, butthey are willing to take online courses ifthey’re not, Aslanian said.

Classroom courses with online fea-tures (being able to check grades or chatwith the instructor) are very popular,she said.

5) Institutions will treat organizationsas “students,” doing business withemployers to meet their training andeducation needs.

Higher education will increasinglytake a “business-to-business” approach

A Profile of theAdult Student

Who adult students are has animpact on how colleges and universi-ties can reach and serve them, saidCarol Aslanian, president of AslanianGroup, Inc., during a recent audioconference.

According to a College Boardstudy of adult students, the typicalstudent is 38 years old, white (85 per-cent), and female (65 percent), shesaid. Students are also likely to bemarried, have a family income of$50,000 or more, and be employedfull-time.

Rather than being “down and out,”these students are “active go-getters”who participate in cultural, athletic,religious, or community activities,Aslanian said. Nearly half (45 percent)volunteer.

“They’re all over the community,and that’s good for you,” becausethese students spread the wordabout your programs and institution,Aslanian said.

Other ways to reach adult stu-dents are through the newspaper(older adults are more likely to read anewspaper daily than young adults),the radio (adult students listen sevento eight hours a week), bookstores(they read 10-12 books a year), andfitness centers (30 percent have gymor fitness club memberships). In addi-tion, these students are familiar withcomputers through their employ-ment, and more than 90 percent havea computer at home.

➤ continued on page 6

▼ Adult Students from page 1

July 2005

[ PAGE 3 ]

It’s not new that some campuses askincoming students to sign privacy

waivers that allow their parents accessto their educational records. What isnew is how strong parent demand foraccess—and student willingness to grantit—has become. Tennessee, for example,is poised to make such waiver programsmandatory statewide.

On May 24, the Tennessee legislatureapproved a bill for a pilot parent infor-mation program at Middle TennesseeState University. If the governor signsthe bill and if all goes well with the pilot,the state will require all campuses—pub-lic and private—to create similar pro-grams. The press officer of the sponsor-ing state legislator, Sen. Rosalind Kurita,said she expects the governor will signthe bill into law.

The legislation calls for all collegesand universities to “provide any informa-tion about a student's well-being, aca-demic progress, or disciplinary status toany person who is responsible, at leastin part, for the payment of the student'stuition and fees, except with respect toinformation that is required to be keptconfidential by federal law.”

In the MTSU pilot, called “Partners inEducation,” the university won’t sharestudent record information with parentsunless students sign a confidentialityrelease form that overrides the privacyrequirements of the federal FamilyEducational Rights and Privacy Act. (Therelease does not apply to personal coun-seling or health records or personalfinancial information unrelated to schooltuition and fees.) If students don’t signthe waiver, FERPA guidelines remain toprohibit the institution from sharing stu-dent educational records with third par-ties, including parents.

But students who sign the waiver givethe university permission to let theirparents or guardians access their finalsemester grades and university-main-tained financial and disciplinary records.Students who enroll in PIE can opt out

at any time. Participation ends automati-cally when students turn 21.

In most situations, parents must initi-ate the contact by seeking out the infor-mation, rather than the university send-ing unsolicited information to the family,said Robert Glenn, MTSU’s vice presi-dent for student affairs. In addition, theprogram’s voluntary nature keeps itFERPA-compliant.

“We determined in our conversationswith the Family Compliance Office[which supervises FERPA] that there wassome flexibility that we could work intothe program to make the institutionmore responsive to parental concerns,”Glenn said.

However, the Tennessee IndependentColleges and Universities Associationisn’t so sure. Although students can optout of the program after they enroll, theuniversity will notify parents that thestudent has done so, said associationpresident Claude Pressnell, Jr.

“I don’t know if FERPA allows forthat kind of aggressive notification,” hesaid.

What parents wantSen. Kurita, who introduced the bill

in February, said she drafted the legisla-tion after she was frustrated by FERPArestrictions when seeking informationabout her own child.

Such situations aren’t new, Glennsaid. “We’ve been getting those callsfrom parents for twenty years. Quitefrankly, FERPA is confusing to most par-ents. When their sons or daughterswere in high school, they had completeaccess to all of their records, but when astudent comes here, that suddenlychanges. Now the students are incharge.”

But today’s students and parents aredifferent from previous decades’, Glennsaid. PIE should help MTSU work withthem more effectively.

“There’s a lot of research coming outon this generation of parents that they

want to be involved. And the researchalso indicates that the students don’tmind them being involved,” Glenn said.“Students in the 1970s or 1980s wouldhave sooner swallowed ground glassthan have their parents be involved inwhat was going on on campus. That’snot the case now. Students today arequite comfortable with their parentsbeing involved in all of the decisions theymake. And so the vast majority of ourstudents are more than willing to sign arelease to give their parents access tothe records that they’re concernedabout.”

However, Pressnell questionswhether legislation is the best approachto balancing students’ needs and par-ents’ desires.

By allowing parents to view discipli-nary or other student affairs records, aninstitution could also give parents infor-mation about counseling or health care,which FERPA does not allow. Forinstance, if the university requires a stu-dent to attend counseling as the resultof a disciplinary hearing, a parentcouldn’t access records about the con-tent of the counseling session, but he orshe would be aware that the counselingoccurred.

That in itself might be enough tokeep students who need help from get-ting it, Pressnell said. In most cases,“counselors will encourage students toinform their parents about situations,”he said. “But in some cases, a parentmay be part of why the student is seek-ing help.”

“We want to make sure that counsel-ing sessions remain private, and this billmight jeopardize that,” Pressnell said.“But we also have a strong desire forstudents to have good working relation-ships with their parents. So we under-stand the balancing that needs to takeplace there, but [legislation], I think, is adifficult way to approach it.”

➤ continued on page 4

Changing Parent Demands Fuel State FERPA Waiver Plan

[ PAGE 4 ]

The pilot programIf a student signs a release and desig-

nates a parent as his or her program“partner,” that partner will receiveaccess to:

• parent newsletters—Each semester,the parent will receive a newsletterthat contains reminders of impor-tant deadlines, campus news, anddiscussion of new academic poli-cies, curricular changes, and advis-ing concerns.

• final grades—Students usuallyaccess their grades online.However, MTSU will send finalsemester grades to students andparents participating in PIE.

• academic advising—Parent partnerscan arrange meetings with theirstudents’ academic advisors.

• discipline records—The partnerswill have unrestricted access totheir students’ disciplinary records.In addition, MTSU will contact par-ents if (1) a student reports to theuniversity that he or she has beenthe victim of a violent crime ornon-forcible sex offense or (2) ifthe student is under the age of 21and is found responsible for analcohol or drug-related offense.

• telephone assistance—parent part-ners can call MTSU’s

• Academic Support Center staffduring weekday business hours.Staff will track down answers toparents’ questions.

The program’s stated goal is torecruit parents as retention allies.According to the PIE information, “All

activities of Partners in Education aredirected toward strengthening the col-laborative relationship between the stu-dent, the family, and Middle TennesseeState University, with the goal ofimproving the academic success andretention of students.”

However, Pressnell said that the legis-lation is primarily a reaction to newsabout the prevalence of student mentalillness. “This has all arisen out of a desirefor parents to become more involved in

the social aspect of the campus environ-ment,” he said. “It really was not driventoward finding out how [students] aredoing in their classes or how they’redoing in terms of bill payments. It wasmore directed toward their social con-duct. It was brought because of fear ofstudent suicide.”

The program, if mandatory, will placean “enormous burden” on administra-tion at private schools, which wouldn’treceive direct funds from the state topay for it, Pressnell said. If the statemandates a web-based program likeMTSU’s, schools must not only pay pro-gramming costs but costs for revampingadministrative procedures.

“We also have concerns about thestate of Tennessee mandating any typeof student affairs policy” for privateschools, he said.

Whether the state mandates the pro-gram or not, MTSU is going ahead withit, Glenn said.

“This was something that has been inplace on other campuses,” Glenn said.“We got the idea here from SouthwestMissouri State University, where a simi-lar program has been in place for a num-ber of years. We’ve adapted the pro-gram to suit our needs and to suit theneeds of our students.” ✓

‘Students in the 1970s or1980s would have sooner

swallowed ground glass thanhave their parents be

involved in what was goingon on campus. That’s not

the case now.’

▼ Parents from page 3

script was soon recognized by the post-secondary community,” said BruceMaron, chair of the working group andassociate director of student informationsystems at the University of Texas-Austin.

The cost of retooling will depend onhow an institution currently processesapplicant and student data. At institu-tions using SIS vendors—which account

for about 70 percent to 75 percent of allcampuses, Sessa estimates—the vendors,not the institutions, will need to makethe changes. However, institutions with“home-grown” student information sys-tems will need to spend more in theshort term to make the adjustments.

“In the long term, though, they caneliminate the multiple ways they’re [pro-cessing high school transcripts] and do itone way,” Sessa said. “Knowing thatevery state is having significant cost and

budget issues, everything is under themicroscope. Standards are a major wayto contain costs because you’re notdoing the same thing 15 ways.”

Timelines and opportunitiesfor input

Sessa guesses the working group willagree on a proposed format and open itto public comment in about six months.

➤ continued on page 6

▼ Transcripts from page 1

July 2005

[ PAGE 5 ]

The Educational Policy Institute, anon-profit organization that focuses

on educational opportunity, hasannounced the creation of a nationalclearinghouse for student retentioninformation.

EPI will operate the NationalStudent Retention Clearinghouse withthe University of Oklahoma, which cur-rently runs the Consortium forStudent Retention Data Exchange. Theconsortium is made up of about 450North American public and privatetwo-year and four-year institutions thatcollect and share undergraduate reten-tion and graduation data.

EPI anticipates the clearinghouse’swebsite (www.studentretention.org) willgo live this month. However, creationof the clearinghouse’s core project—adatabase of effective, retention pro-grams and strategies—will be ongoing,said Watson Scott Swail, EPI president.

Any type of college or university willbe able to submit data about a reten-tion program, strategy, or practice;however, not all submissions will makeit into the database, Swail said. A peer-review panel will vet submissions,which will need to include not only adescription of the program or strategy,but also evidence of its effectiveness.

That evidence is important becausehigher education institutions areincreasingly being held accountable fortheir persistence and graduation rates,Swail said. “So we’re not interested inbuilding a database of just anythingthat’s out there,” he said.

The panel will also rate each submis-sion’s usefulness by a system that hasyet to be created. Visitors to the sitewill also be able to rate how usefulthey think different entries are, muchlike readers rank the helpfulness ofother readers’ book reviews onAmazon.com.

“It’s a different approach for educa-tion, but one that I think works,” Swailsaid.

EPI hopes to build a comprehensivedatabase including information thatapplies to all institution types, includingproprietary institutions, and to allstages of the undergraduate career,Swail said. Part of the clearinghouse’smission will be to dispel the myth thatretention is just a first-year concern.

“We’ve been kind of programmedto focus on retention as only a fresh-man issue, and it’s not,” he said. “Thefreshman year is probably the mostimportant year—I wouldn’t argueagainst that at all—but we get lulledinto this belief that if we do [retentionwork in] the freshman year, we’vedone our job. But the data clearlyshow that that’s just not true. ForAfrican-Americans, Hispanics, and low-income students, just as many leaveafter the second year as after the firstyear. That’s important to knowbecause it changes policy and program-matic decisions on campus. I presentthat data across the country [aboutsophomore-year attrition], and every-one’s shocked when I show it. No onebelieves that’s the truth, but I’m usingnational data sets to show it.”

The clearinghouse’s main missionwill be to disseminate information tohelp practitioners do their work whiledemonstrating the need to take reten-tion seriously.

“Something I always say to people--I’m kind of harsh on this, from theinstitutional point of view--is that ifyou’re willing to admit a student toyour university or college, you’veentered a contractual relationship todo whatever you can to ensure thatthe student has a high probability ofsuccess. The student is also entering anagreement that says, ‘I’m going to dowhat I can.’ There has to be an under-standing that it comes down to thattype of attitude to make it happen. Ifit’s just pushing people and pushingpaper, students get lost.”

The clearinghouse will also conduct

research, sponsor national retentionawards, and host the National StudentRetention Conference October 3-5 inDallas. ✓

Institute Will Create Retention Clearinghouse

President: William Haightwhaight@magnapubs.com

Publisher: David Burnsdburns@magnapubs.com

Editorial Content Director: Bob Bogdabbogda@magnapubs.com

Editor: Therese Kattnertkattner@magnapubs.com

Creative Services Director: Debra Lovelien

Customer Service Manager: Mark BeyerE-mail: custserv@magnapubs.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORS AND

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jim Carr, Harding University; Alan Crist,University of Wisconsin – Parkside; Clinita A.Ford, Florida A&M University; Ernest Pascarella,University of Iowa; David Shore, HarvardUniversity; Reginald Wilson, ACE, Office of thePresident; Johnny D. Jones, University of Arkansas.

Recruitment & Retention in Higher Education(ISSN 0891-012X) is published monthly byMagna Publications, Inc., 2718 Dryden Dr.,Madison, WI 53704. Website: www.magna-pubs.com. Fax: 608-246-3597. Phone: 800-433-0499 or 608-246-3580. One-year subscription:$237. Discounts available for multiple subscrip-tions. Periodicals postage paid at Madison, WI.POSTMASTER: Send change of address to:Recruitment & Retention, 2718 Dryden Dr.,Madison, WI 53704. Copyright © 2005 MagnaPublications, Inc.

To order back issues, call Customer Service at 800-433-0499. Back issues cost $25.00 each ($197 forthe previous year’s complete collection), plus ship-ping and handling in the US. You can pay withMasterCard, VISA, Discover, or American Express.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or per-sonal use, or the internal or personal use of specificclients, is granted by Recruitment & Retention forusers registered with the Copyright Clearance Center(CCC) Academic Permissions Service, provided that50 cents per page is paid directly to CCC, 222Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; Phone: 978-750-8400; www.copyright.com. For those organiza-tions that have been granted a photocopy license byCCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged.

[ PAGE 6 ]

“Once we ‘bless’ that standard andwe put it out there for the public, wewill then track who’s implementing itand start advocating for the implementa-tion of the standard,” Sessa said. “Sothere’s really two steps: One is comingto agreement on what should be in thatstandard: What do you need to be sentback and forth? The second step is thenimplementing it. And that takes years.”

According to the minutes of theworking group’s first weekly conferencecall in late May, a guide to implementingXML high school transcripts should beready in the next few months. In addi-

tion, the U.S. Education Department’sNational Center for Education Statisticsshould publish a draft of a new systemto code K-12 classes by the end of thesummer.

An early suggested transcript schemais available at www.pesc.org/workgroups/hstranscript for review and pilot tests.(During the May call, working groupchairman Marton said he encourages “allinterested parties to use it and test it todiscover bugs and deficiencies.”)

The May call was attended by 39 peo-ple representing 24 organizations, includ-ing PESC, student information systemsvendors, federal and state educationagencies, university system boards of

regents, and individual campuses.Meeting minutes are available atwww.pesc.org/publications/standard/05-05.pdf.

For information on joining the work-ing group conference calls or to com-ment on work so far, contact MichaelSessa, PESC executive director, 202-293-7383 or sessa@pesc.org. ✓

to recruiting adult learners.

6) More minority adult students willenroll.

The United States, population isbecoming more diverse; white studentswill go from 70 percent to 50 percent ofthe population by 2050. However, high-er education is not as good at enrollingunderrepresented minority students as itis at enrolling white students (85 per-cent of the adult student population iswhite), so reaching underserved popula-tions will remain a major concern.

7) Younger and older students willshare the same campus.

Nearly half of adult students attendclasses during the day, so your daytimestudent population might be older thanyou think, Aslanian said. Meanwhile, pro-grams that have historically drawn older,working students are increasinglybecoming attractive to younger studentswho have adult work or family responsi-

bilities. In addition, online courses areenrolling students from all age groups.

8) Age will no longer predict learningbehavior.

A 50-year-old man, for example,might enroll in a full-time day programto change careers while 21-year-oldwoman needs to study online or at nightbecause she has a job or a family. In addi-tion, “non-traditional young” tend tohave more in common with adult stu-dents than with traditional-age students,Aslanian said.

9) Competition for the adult studentmarket will increase.

Enrollment at for-profit institutionscould double every three years,eCollege.com predicts. So if your adultenrollments are decreasing, Aslaniansays, that doesn’t mean that the marketis decreasing. It means that adult stu-dents are finding what they need some-where else.

“They’re coming in to pick up yourtrade,” she said. “They’ve found a gap.”

10) We will increasingly view formerstudents as future students.

By 2025, 25 percent of the popula-tion will be age 60 or older, and we willsee the emergence of “woopies”—well-off older people—who will have themoney to afford education, whether forpersonal growth or for career advance-ment, Aslanian said.

The average age of the adult studentmight increase, too, with people in their50s or 60s (who are still workingbecause of good health, financial need,or interest in staying active) attendingcourses or programs previously attend-ed by students in their 30s.

More information about ordering a CDrecording of “Marketing to Adult Students”is available at www.magnapubs.com/catalog/cds/597097-1.html. ✓

▼ Adult Students from page 2

▼ Transcripts from page 4

July 2005

[ PAGE 7 ]

Study Explores the Impact ofAffirmative Action

In “The Opportunity Cost ofAdmission Preferences at EliteUniversities” in the latest issue of SocialScience Quarterly, Princeton Universityresearchers Thomas J. Espenshade andChang Y. Chung argue that race-blindadmissions at elite colleges would causedramatic declines in the numbers ofAfrican-American and Hispanic studentsaccepted. At the same time, they say,ignoring race in admissions at theseschools would result in little gain forwhite applicants.

The authors found that African-American applicants’ acceptance ratewould drop to 12.2 percent from 33.7percent, while Hispanic applicants’ ratewould decline to 12.9 percent from 26.8percent.

Asian students would fill nearly 80percent of the spots that would becaused by these decreases. In contrast,white applicants’ acceptance rate wouldrise by only 0.5 percentage points, to24.3 percent from 23.8 percent.

The authors examined more than124,000 applications to elite institutions,reviewing SAT scores, race, sex, citizen-ship, athletic ability, and legacy and com-paring admissions outcome.

Race Had Little Force inShaping New Berkeley Class

A review of 8,000 admissions applica-tions for the current freshman class atthe University of California-Berkeley hasfound that race had little influence inwho the university admitted.

UC-Berkeley’s race-neutral “compre-hensive review” policy, adopted in thewake of a state vote banning affirmativeaction, came under scrutiny when theformer UC Board of Regents’ chairmanargued that the policy was “impossibleto audit” for hidden racial preferences.He asserted that in 2002, several hun-dred underrepresented minority stu-dents with SAT scores of less than 1,000

were admitted while white or Asian-American students with much higherscores were denied admission.

The study, conducted by a UC-Berkeley sociology professor, found thatsome students with lower SAT scoreswere admitted over students with higherscores because the lower-scorers hadstronger high school transcripts, includ-ing higher GPAs and more AdvancedPlacement credits.

Race and ethnicity played a small rolein two areas: Minority students had aslightly higher probability than white stu-dents of being among the 11 percent ofapplications that were flagged for furtherreview instead of being denied admis-sion. The study also found that in-stateNative-American and Hispanic applicantshad a “very small” advantage over in-state Asian-American students.However, the difference carried “the sta-tistical equivalent of getting a B insteadof an A in one or two courses” in anentire high school career, the studyauthor said.

The 76-page report can be down-loaded from www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/05/16_houtreport.pdf.

Students Forget the ‘Science’ inForensic Science

Television crime dramas like CSI andCrossing Jordan may be boosting enroll-ment in college forensic science pro-grams (March 2003 Recruitment &Retention), but they’re not giving stu-dents a realistic picture of what the disci-pline is actually about, forensic scienceinstructors say.

“We’ll lose two out of 10 [students]because they come in with these crazyviews of what it’s really like,” ClairShepard, director of the forensic scienceprogram at Georgia’s Griffin TechnicalCollege, told the Los Angeles Times.Students are sometimes surprised tofind, for example, that many programsrequire four years of chemistry.

Students Take Out Higher-Interest Loans, Despite Risks

An increasing number of students aretaking out higher-interest “alternative”loans to help pay for their educations,the University of Massachusetts’ DailyCollegian reports.

The amount UMass students haveborrowed through these loans hasincreased to $12 million from $1.5 mil-lion in the last five years. During thattime, the amount of UMass students’average alternative loan increased to$8,600 from $5,600. Meanwhile, thenumber of students taking out alterna-tive loans increased to 1,440 from 250.Tuition and fees at UMass increased bymore than $3,700 during that time, saidKen Burnham, financial aid director.

More than one in five students whotake out loans to attend school dropout, according to “Borrowers WhoDrop Out: A Neglected Aspect of theCollege Student Loan Trend,” a newreport from the National Center forPublic Policy and Higher Education.Higher-interest loans only add to therisk.

Although loans can be a good invest-ment, given the higher income thatdegree-holders often command, studentswho drop out are often “worse off thanthey were before” they attended college,says the report (available at www.highereducation.org). ✓

RNewswir e

[ PAGE 8 ]

RresourcesEducational Attainment andRace

In On the Edge of Commitment:Educational Attainment and Race in theUnited States (2005), Stephen L. Morganuses a new model to explain puzzlingrace differences in high school achieve-ment and college enrollment patterns.Ordering information ($55) is availablefrom Stanford University Press atwww.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=4419.

Best Practices for First-YearStudents

Achieving and Sustaining InstitutionalExcellence for the First Year of College(2005) features case studies of 13 cam-puses named “Institutions of Excellence”by the Policy Center on the First Year ofCollege in 2002. The 480-page bookdetails these colleges’ best practices inteaching, assessing, and retaining first-year college students. Ordering informa-tion ($45) is available atwww.josseybass.com.

Educating the Net GenerationEducating the Net Generation (2005)

uses data and anecdotes to explain howstudents use campus technology andwhat they demand from it. This articlecollection, produced by the non-profitgroup Educause, also explores the impli-cations of their expectations and experi-ences for faculty and student servicesstaff. The free book is available to view,print, or download atwww.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen/.The online version includes links tosound, video, and supplementary datafiles.

Conference: Multiculturalismand Change

The National Association of StudentPersonnel Administrators and theUniversity of Nevada-Las Vegas will host

the conference “Multiculturalism in theContext of Institutional Change andStrategic Priorities” Dec. 8-10 at UNLV.The conference will address how institu-tions can develop new strategic priori-ties in light of changing student demo-graphics. More information is availableat www.naspa.org/prodev.

Creating Conditions forStudent Success

Student Success in College: CreatingConditions that Matter, a new 400-pagebook by George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie,John H. Schuh, and Elizabeth J. Whitt,looks at effective student success prac-tices at various types of institutions andoffers advice on how to implementthese programs. Ordering information($38) is available at www.josseybass.com.

Condition of Education 2005The National Center for Education

Statistics has released “The Condition ofEducation 2005,” a summary of impor-tant trends in U.S. education. The 2005print edition covers four main areas:enrollment trends and student charac-teristics at all levels of the education sys-tem, student achievement and longer-term outcomes, student effort and per-sistence rates, and public and privatefinancial support of education at all lev-els. To read or download the report,visit http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/.

Student Recruitment andRetention Conference

Noel-Levitz will hold its NationalConference on Student Recruitment,Marketing, and Retention inWashington, D.C. July 27-30. This con-ference combines the North AmericanEnrollment Management Institute andNational Conference on StudentRetention into one event. Session topicsinclude student recruitment, student

retention, financial aid, market research,and staff development. More informa-tion is available at www.noellevitz.com.

Strategic Integrated MarketingConference

Stamats will host its 8th annualStrategic Integrated MarketingConference in Chicago July 26-28.Topics include how to write, fund, orevaluate an integrated marketing cam-paign. More information is available atwww.stamats.com/seminars/default.asp.

Census Bureau EnrollmentReport

According to the U.S. CensusBureau’s new report “SchoolEnrollment—Social and EconomicCharacteristics of Students: October2003,” the boom in traditional-age col-lege enrollment will continue. The num-ber of students under age 25 will“increase markedly over the nextdecade, as the larger birth cohorts ofthe late 1980s and the 1990s reach col-lege age,” the report predicts.

But the report also shows that olderadults and part-time or working stu-dents of all ages accounted for a largechunk of the 16.6 million college stu-dents in 2003. In that year,

• one-third of students were enrolledpart-time

• 60 percent of students worked whileattending school

• at two-year institutions, 37 percentwere nontraditional (age 25 or older)and 67 percent were women

• nearly a quarter (22 percent) ofundergraduates at four-year collegeswere nontraditional.

The report is available at www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p20-554.pdf.✓