Technology's Role in College Recruitment

By: Jonathan Barber

According to an interview with University of Houston professor and associate dean John Butler, mass mailings from colleges and universities are time consuming and costly, and they produce a low rate of return from many recipients who simply throw the materials in the trash because they are not interested in the institution.

As a result, in recent years, educational establishments have started to recruit students via electronic means. Colleges, including Ursinus, now frequently post admission forms, course catalogs, advisor e-mail addresses, and more on their web sites. For instance, according to NewsChannel5.com, students thinking about attending a particular school can investigate the resources offered by particular campuses by participating in “virtual” college tours via a few keystrokes.

Ursinus has taken to the Internet to improve its communication with prospective students. By applying to Ursinus online, a student who is still in high school can save the $50 registration fee that they would have to pay if they applied via mail. According Richard DiFeliciantonio, Vice President for Enrollment at Ursinus, “applicants can now follow in real time the progress of their applications, learning what’s missing so they can work toward timely completion.” Other information provided in the Admissions section of the Ursinus Web site includes information on majors and minors, application deadlines, information on the Common Intellectual Experience, and instructions for arranging overnight visits to the campus. Additionally, the sign-ups for freshman orientation and the survey for freshmen housing are also completed online now, a change from just a few years ago.

Photos on the Web site can offer a visual sampling of what prospective students can expect when they make it to campus. This was the case with freshmen Maria Krolikowski, who explained, “I looked at the pics before I visited to make sure I liked the looks of the campus and everything it had to offer.” Such pictures can be especially helpful to those students who live a distance from Ursinus and are not able to visit the campus as easily as students living in the immediate vicinity. For an international student, the Web site of a college in the United States can be an indispensable resource, according to StudentAffairs.com.

The Web also allows prospective students to reach people on a college campus instantaneously. On November 11, 2008, then-Ursinus Director of Admissions Bob McCullough took part in a live chat with parents and prospective students on the Philadelphia Inquirer Web site. He fielded a variety of questions. For example, a father asked if the Merit Award earned by his son, who had applied Early Decision to Ursinus, would be affected by a decision to waive the son’s SAT scores. Within three minutes, the father had an answer to a question that could have taken as long as a month to answer by United States Postal Service mail.

Freshmen Mary Barbagallo says she used the Internet for admissions-related tasks as well. “I was constantly checking to make sure Admissions had everything they needed to process my application.”

The increased use of technology has lead to applications being sent into Ursinus from all 50 states. The actual enrollment has changed somewhat as well, as more students from Connecticut and Massachusetts are deciding to attend Ursinus.

Just the other day, I was on the Facebook page of a friend who is a tour guide. A student to whom he had given a tour of Ursinus to had made a post on his wall, thanking him for showing her around the campus. Ursinus, DiFeliciantonio says, has an official Facebook profile which it uses to inform potential students about the college and attract them to the campus.

The ability of prospective students to keep in touch with current students and admissions staff has had a significant impact on applicant rates, according to DiFeliciantonio. The increase in simple e-mail correspondence between prospective students and admissions staff has “increased our applicant levels from 2,000 to 6,000 over the past four years.” Furthermore, Ursinus is attracting “students from places where the college was relatively unknown in the past.”
Ursinus has a bright future, regardless of who you talk to. With the Web and other technological resources, there is no telling what possibilities are on the horizon for the college.


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E-Mail Outsourcing

By: Jonathan Barber

If you forward your Ursinus e-mails to another account such as Gmail, you may be surprised to know that you are not alone. According to an article on InsideHigherEd.com, more and more students are forwarding their school e-mails to personal e-mail accounts. Therefore, it is not so surprising that many colleges are choosing to outsource their e-mail systems, according to a front-page article in the Sept. 25, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education. “Outsourcing” in this case would involve a college’s e-mail system being run by an off-campus entity, namely Google or Microsoft, as opposed to by the college’s Instructional Technology department. According to an Aug. 14, 2009 article on TIME.com, in the 2008 Campus Computing Project (CCP) survey, 42% of colleges said that they had already switched or intended to switch to an outsourced student e-mail service.

Could Ursinus see such a change?

Network Technologies Manager James Shuttlesworth says that it is “unlikely” that Ursinus would go the outsourced e-mail route in the foreseeable future. The first reason, he says, is that Ursinus can’t necessarily trust student information “to an outside vendor.” Being that important information is transmitted via e-mail, privacy issues could arise if an entity other than Ursinus’ IT department oversaw the operation of campus e-mail. The other reason, Shuttlesworth says, relates to the issue of “system persistence.” If Ursinus outsourced its e-mail to a company which changed its terms of service or, worse yet, went out of business entirely, the college could be left in a position where it would have to switch the system over to Ursinus’ IT department and server with little notice. John King, Chief Information Officer of the college, agrees: “While vendors will try to be as responsive as possible, you still are totally dependent upon an outside entity to act on your behalf.”

Another reason for Ursinus not switching to outsourced e-mail which was not mentioned by Shuttlesworth or King could be the job security of IT department workers. If e-mail maintenance was to be accorded to an outside organization, then there would be less work to do for Ursinus’ IT department workers. Job cuts could potentially result.

The Web site of “Google Apps Education Edition,” the outsourcing service that Google offers to colleges and universities, lists the top 10 reasons for schools to switch to the service. One of the reasons is that schools can save money: “Outsourcing the maintenance of servers to Google frees up resources that would have been spent on additional licenses and upgrades.” According to an Aug. 14, 2009 article on TIME.com, such upgrades are covered by the company that runs the e-mail system. Furthermore, both Google and Microsoft insist on their Web sites that they do not charge educational institutions fees to outsource their e-mail systems.

However, as King specifies, the college does not spend a great deal of money on e-mail services as it is. “As a participant in the Microsoft Campus Agreement program, the cost to us for Exchange and Outlook is minimal.” King even went so far as to say that it “would make no economic sense.” So, switching to outsourced e-mail would not change anything major from a financial perspective.

The main benefit to outsourcing Ursinus e-mail would be the dramatic increase in mailbox storage size. Ursinus.edu’s IT section states that students have a maximum mailbox quota of one hundred megabytes. Outsourced e-mail provides multiple times that space. Google Apps Education Edition, for example, boasts over seven gigabytes of storage per student. According to a simple conversion operation at UnitConverter.org, seven gigabytes offers is over seventy times the space as a hundred megabytes.

However, according to Tech Support student workers who were surveyed, outsourcing Ursinus e-mail would not make practical sense. Few of the questions that are presently posed to Ursinus Tech Support student staff relate to e-mail problems, which indicates that there may not be many e-mail-related problems that could be solved by outsourcing e-mail. Ty Wetzel, a junior Tech Support worker, “A very low percentage of students actually come in asking for assistance with e-mail.” Emily White, a senior worker, agreed. “The vast majority of the questions I see fall into categories that wouldn't necessarily be resolved by outsourcing.”

In fact, outsourcing could even make the problem worse, White reasons. She alludes to Shuttlesworth’s point that Ursinus IT staff need to have control over the operation of the campus’ own e-mail system. “It's my opinion that switching to a third-party server would just create additional barriers to resolving a tech support issue because we wouldn't have immediate access or control to resolve the issue.” In that situation, she says, “We would be little more than experienced users of the system.” Outsourcing e-mail is a major decision which requires consideration of finances, privacy, storage, and the operational and administrative structure. While it seems to be practical at other colleges, it may not be suitable for a college such as Ursinus.


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The Kindle... is it worth it?

By: Ellen Bernhard

These days, carrying around 160 gigs of music and movies on a device smaller than a cell phone is old news. Updating my Facebook status and creating an iTunes playlist while I sit in Wismer with my iPhone has become routine. With technology always changing, it is not surprising that even literature would be on the short list to catch the technology bug.

Every year, students at Ursinus make their semiannual pilgrimage to the campus bookstore, equipped with class schedules and credit cards to invest in their education. The line wraps around the store; students carry stacks of books to the register, holding their breath as the final price tag shows up on the register, delivering a serious blow to many. The last thing students want is to drop several hundred dollars on books, when that money could go toward many other perfectly good uses. Little has been done in changing this routine, but with technology taking over in several other aspects of our lives, it is about time for the well-worn textbooks and anthologies to meet their technological match.

As one of the most popular electronic reading devices on the market, Amazon.com’s Kindle got a makeover last spring when the website released Kindle DX, a more powerful and much larger version than the original, which sold thousands due to its inexpensive bestseller and publication lists and easy usage. With just a few clicks, the user can have access to thousands of books, newspapers, and magazines, all at discounted prices. The DX, with its 9.7” diagonal screen display, is close to four inches larger than its original counterpart, and costs almost twice as much, weighing in at a hefty $489, excluding online book purchases. The product aims to rectify what we as college students deplore the most: expensive prices and bulky textbooks that only return a fraction of the cost at the end of the semester. But the benefits of a paperless classroom are simultaneously met with problems.

With technology clearly an integral part of our lives, it seems like all our free cash goes straight toward some flashy gadget or entertainment device. iTunes has made a fortune from selling expensive iPods and cheap downloads to those who refuse to spend more money on another CD, but love the status that comes from owning a small, sleek, high-powered machine. Amazon.com is using the same platform: people are willing to drop the cash on an expensive device if the products they can buy are sold at reduced costs. At $489, this device is not accessible to everyone, but when you look at the logistics, the device will eventually pay for itself. Amazon.com prides itself on their huge e-book collection with over 350,000 at the ready. Most bestsellers and fiction books are priced at only $9.99, much less than a hardcover new release from Barnes & Noble.

Even textbooks are seeing the same drop in prices. For example, a hardcover geology textbook on Amazon.com priced at $312 sells for $249.60 as the Kindle version. Over several semesters of receiving discounts like that, a student could see a lot more money in his wallet each year. Of course, not all classroom texts are that expensive, but if English majors could purchase an entire semester’s worth of novels and essays online, the returns could become just as great. There is an unfortunate drawback to this, however. Kindle versions cannot be returned for cash at the end of the semester, which means with each new edition, students are forced to pay high prices still.

Aside from the financial benefits of using Kindle textbooks, colleges can also become more active in the fight against global warming. A paperless college is something that many schools aim for, including Ursinus. Most documents are sent via email and many professors stress sending assignments via email or Blackboard to reduce the amount of paper used. There is a massive environmental benefit to doing this: less paper is used, which means that there is less damage done to the planet. According to an article published in a September issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, it is important to realize “how many printed textbooks become obsolete each year when publishers put out new versions.” Think of all the books you’ve returned for cash over the years. Now multiply that by every college student in the United States alone. It’s a massive number.

Just sitting at my computer desk, I’m inundated with technological clutter: music is playing from my portable USB speakers, Panasonic headphones hang from my desk lamp and the newest addition to my technological family, a 1 terabyte external hard drive, hides under cables snaking in every direction. Technology has taken over every other aspect of my life, why should I add one more product to my arsenal of beeping, flashing, devices? What can I say, I’m a literature purist. I adore my paperbacks. I love going home and looking at the stacks of books I’ve collected over the years, from Dr. Seuss to Dr. Zhivago. I’ve come to the realization that the last thing I want to do is stare at another screen. Although I’d like to hang on to my paperback copies forever, I feel the transition is ultimately inevitable. One day, and probably soon, my stacks of books may meet their untimely fate as the Kindle becomes introduced to my technological repertoire.


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