Gift cards for higher education?
Obviously gift cards are very much on my mind these days. I posted this as a discussion on the Gift Cards Group on LinkedIn, and thought I’d cross-post it here. Any ideas?
Spotting a gift card for the Stanford University stores last night in a local (Palo Alto) supermarket, I wondered about the feasibility of gift cards for higher education. The store gift cards are a great idea - they can be used on everything from team shirts to those super-expensive text books - but what about gift cards as a way to contribute to the funding of the education itself?
I imagine it could work this way: An umbrella organization recruits colleges, universities, technical schools - all forms of higher education - to be members. Money loaded onto cards goes into a pool account from which the members draw an annual interest payment. Parents and loved ones can buy gift cards from the umbrella organization throughout the child’s life, and they can be loaded into the child’s pre-paid account via the web, phone, or mobile. When the child is old enough to pick a college, they would have all that credit waiting to be applied wherever they choose to matriculate.
Does something like this already exist and I don’t know about it? If it doesn’t, why not? Are there possible regulatory issues?
Filed under: Life
A couple of things off of the top of my head: 1) Students have to give specific permission for others to access their financial records (because of FERPA). 2) Many colleges’ information management systems are not savvy enough to figure out how to do this. Many of them are running many versions behind the current product release and the systems themselves (Banner, Peoplesoft, etc.) are designed by those who only have toes for fingers. Horrible systems.
Thanks, Casey!
I wasn’t thinking that anyone else could access their financial records - people gift them with the cards, and while they are minors, their parents can load the account with credit (would that be illegal?).
My father, who’s worked in higher (private) education in Ohio for 20+ years, says: “I do know Ohio had a college voucher system in place whereby parents bought vouchers at today’s prices for future use, but I am not sure if the program disbanded or not. I have not heard about it in a while.”
The software program sounds like one to crack. Are there only, like, four fields for funding input (grant, direct payment, student loan, scholarship)? I’m now thinking that this is just a way to build your own scholarship fund. Would the umbrella organization have to write a check to the school by way of redemption, then?
I think Florida and a few other states have similar systems in place. Of course, the problem there is that whenever they redeem those vouchers, the budget issue is still there because costs always go up.
I don’t know re: the software piece, only from the perspective as a user of those content management systems. They’re bloated, and they are functionally stupid. For example, at a previous institution I worked for, to process a credit for someone’s room, we had to cancel the room, then cancel their contract, then refund their student account. And hope it took. The problem is that these big box companies make XYZ software for colleges to use. Then the colleges use their ITS staff to tweak the software and mangle it to work with their existing, crippled systems because their current staff tend to be so entrenched in their habits that teaching them a new way to do things would cost more productivity-wise. And then you start all over again once you’ve got everything implemented when the newer version of the software comes out.
But that’s a long answer to your question. Hahah! Yep, organizations can just cut a check to ABC University for Jackie Danicki and it’ll get credited okay. It’s just on the backend where it gets hairy. :)
Sounds like there may be a market opportunity for an open source software solution to that particular piece of the puzzle…
Did you need ANOTHER job, Jackie? :)
PS I am so sorry I haven’t responded yet. We are so swamped with packing that socializing right now looks dim :(
Casey, I lament that life is too short for all the projects I’d love to undertake!
As for socializing before your big move, don’t sweat it! Things are nuts for me at work and I’m prepping for holiday travel, so no worries. The Bay Area will miss you and your babies!