Feature

Students have enough on their plates without having to worry about properly receiving their work-study hours from their financial aid packages. But, paper time cards and siloed systems were making life difficult for students and staff alike at Catawba College (N.C.).

Sometimes Plan A and Plan B need to be implemented simultaneously before you can determine which is the better way to go all along. Increasing enrollment and soaring numbers of financial aid recipients at Lakeland Community College (Ohio) had combined with plunging state support to place an enormous burden on support staff who simply couldn’t keep up with students’ requests for help during peak times. In 2011, Lakeland implemented a dual solution in hopes of serving students in a more timely fashion and freeing staff from spending too much of their day handling routine requests.

New students understandably want to get going in their studies as soon as possible. So as soon as a new student’s data was recorded in SunGard Banner, its ERP system, NorthWest Arkansas Community College issued a temporary password providing access to an online portal with class information, registration capabilities, and so on.

As the University Business editorial team began judging the entries for this first round of the Models of Efficiency program’s third year, a few things became clear. One is that, with so much practice, we are becoming all the more efficient in spotting the great efficiency success stories.

Acceptance of cloud computing—the practice of storing data in off-site servers rather than on campus—has been growing by leaps and bounds, at least in some areas. “It’s growing in the areas easier to rip and replace, such as CRM,” says Stan Swete, chief technology officer at Workday, which offers HR and Payroll systems through software as a service (SaaS).

Alternative revenue streams are increasingly attractive to higher education leaders struggling to live in the new budgetary normal triggered by the recession. Monetizing assets such as audio, video, and images an institution already has or is continually generating through digital asset management (DAM) can be tantalizing to those managing a school’s coffers. But in the academic environment, can officials look beyond the perception that for-profit endeavors cheapen a school’s reputation? 

The University of Texas at San Antonio campus is dominated by modern cream-colored buildings with dark red tile roofs and acres of parking lots, testimony to 40 years of serving largely as a commuter school for students from the surrounding area.

When it comes to e-commerce, anything retail can do, college campuses can do, too—and probably better, experts say. That explains in large part why the lone bookstore URLs many colleges and universities began with have blossomed into hundreds of online money opportunities ranging from student fees to concert and athletic tickets, from parking permits to alumni donations.

Social networking, online banking, entertainment... There’s an app for that—and for everything else you can think of. When it comes to higher ed, there’s an app for that, too. From behind-the-scenes mobile CRM apps to in-your-face athletic program apps, campus administrators are developing ways to make students’, administrators’, and faculty members’ lives a bit easier (or just more fun).

An institutional website is not only often the first contact a prospective student has with a college or university but also a constant landing point for current students, faculty, and staff. “We looked at trends and research and realized that the website is very important to recruiting,” says Beverly Golden, director of marketing and communications at The University of Texas at Tyler. “It might be the first thing people see about your institution.”