It occurred to me this week–while trying to sort out all of my paperwork for a class I’m taking at a California State university–just how backward student recordkeeping is in this country. While areas such as Finance, Shipping & Logistics, Manufacturing, and Technology Services have been fine-tuning their Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for over 30 years, the education sector has become ever more fractured in the wake of the Internet. Every college has their own system, with it’s own quirks and difficulties, and few of them work together at even the shallowest layers.
Each and every semester, nearly every student who transfers from one college to another has to have paper transcripts sent between colleges. In many cases, copies of the transcripts are only available to the students by mail, so at a minimum a student has to have 2-3 copies printed and mailed. All of this is per college attended, so a student who attended 3 different community colleges prior to transferring to a state school might have to order 9 transcripts to be printed and mailed. If they transfer again a year later, the number could go up to 12 (or more for students with scholarships or other obligations where proof of GPA is required).
As you can imagine, this cycle of printing, mailing, receiving, processing, and filing all of this paper is practically an industry unto itself. A gluttonous, wasteful industry which has never had to bear the burden of its own indirect costs. View full article »