Press Release

100 Schools Launch First Year of Clearinghouse’s DegreeVerify Service

HERNDON, VA, DECEMBER 12, 2001 – The National Student Clearinghouse, a national non-profit organization founded by the higher education community, today announced the active participation of its 100th school in the DegreeVerify program. Nashville State Technical Institute went ‘live’ with DegreeVerify on December 5, 2001. Recruiters, employers, and other individuals and organizations can instantaneously verify the academic credentials of graduates via the on-line DegreeVerify service at www.studentclearinghouse.org.

Implemented one year ago, DegreeVerify is an on-line verification reporting service modeled after the Clearinghouse’s original student loan reporting service, today used by post-secondary institutions with 90% of the nation’s enrolled students. With DegreeVerify, schools appoint the Clearinghouse to act as their agent in the dissemination of degree information, transmit degree data shortly after each degree conferral period, and then refer degree verification requests to the Clearinghouse. Employers and agencies can obtain instant degree confirmations 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week from the Clearinghouse website. DegreeVerify reduces the workload in registrars’ offices and there is no cost to institutions.

Shannon Kelly, assistant registrar with the University of Maryland-College Park and DegreeVerify participant since June, states: "We’ve been very pleased with the DegreeVerify program. Our office has seen a tremendous reduction in the number of telephone calls received from those seeking degree verifications. The DegreeVerify service has assisted us in improving the efficiency of our day-to-day operations. We’ve also been very happy with the customer service the Clearinghouse has provided to students, alumni and third party requestors."

According to Priscilla Tibbs, registrar with Nashville State Technical Institute, "Daily phone interruptions from requestors affected our ability to efficiently manage mission-critical office duties and distracted from one-on-one student interaction. The Clearinghouse’s DegreeVerify service will make a tremendous difference in the management of our student records."

"Having 100 active institutions participating in DegreeVerify indicates the level of acceptance this service has received in the higher education community," states Daniel Boehmer, president of the National Student Clearinghouse. "We are developing a national degree database that is so comprehensive and easily accessible that we hope degree fraud will become a thing of the past. In the not-too-distant future, no employer will think of hiring someone without verifying their degree. I don’t think that’s unrealistic – we re-engineered the student loan reporting process so it is not a burden on registrars. We can do the same for degree verifications."

In addition to the 100 active institutions representing a total enrollment of 1.2 million students, another 99 institutions have signed participation agreements and expect to be active in the near future. Over two million degree records now exist in the DegreeVerify database. In addition to the University of Maryland-College Park and Nashville State Technical Institute, current active participating schools include Michigan State University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Penn State University, Cornell University, University of Georgia, and University of California-Berkley. For a complete list of participating institutions and more information on the DegreeVerify program, please visit the Clearinghouse website at www.studentclearinghouse.org.

About The National Student Clearinghouse

The National Student Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization founded by the higher education community, maintains a comprehensive electronic registry of post-secondary student enrollment, degree and loan records. Our mission is to help improve the overall efficiency of higher education administrative offices and assist in the enhancement of services to alumni, students and external verification requestors by streamlining the student record verification process. Through the regular accumulation and aggregation of student records from participating post-secondary educational institutions into a centralized national registry, the Clearinghouse provides a single, highly-automated point-of-contact for organizations requiring timely, accurate verification of student enrollment, degree, and loan data.

Today 2,700 colleges, representing 91% of the nation’s enrollment, participate in the Clearinghouse by providing regular student record updates on all of their currently enrolled students to our national databases. Student loan providers, employers, student credit card issuers, student health insurance providers and the federal government access the Clearinghouse’s registry over 100 million times annually to conduct electronic student record verifications.

For more information, visit www.studentclearinghouse.org

Press Inquiries:
Kathleen Dugan
Marketing Director
703-742-4208
dugan@studentclearinghouse.org