National Student Clearinghouse® Reorganizes, Adding Greater Value for the Higher Education Community

HERNDON, Va., Jan. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Student Clearinghouse today announced a new service structure that will support its mission to have greater impact and provide value-added services to the education community. The National Student Clearinghouse facilitates the exchange and understanding of student enrollment, performance, and related information. More than 3,300 U.S. postsecondary institutions educating nearly 94% of the nation's enrollment depend on the Clearinghouse, which has become the leading provider of educational reporting, verification, and research.

With goals looking toward future growth and innovation and modernizing infrastructure, the Clearinghouse is developing several new areas and enhancing existing service areas.

• New Financial Aid Services – Building upon its enrollment, completion and Gainful Employment reporting services, the Clearinghouse will be focusing on ways to provide institutions with new reports and analytics that will assist them with compliance and assessment efforts associated with federal and state financial aid programs.
• Meeting infrastructure and service needs into the future, domestically and internationally – As institutions in the United States continue to develop their internationalization efforts, the Clearinghouse will also enhance its services to help institutions meet the reporting, authentication, and verification needs associated with their globalization goals. This includes enabling and facilitating increased global student and graduate portability by easing school- and student-based work burdens.
• Educational Research – The higher education community is increasingly aware of the quality and impact of Clearinghouse research. The Clearinghouse will continue to enhance its research capabilities to meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders from state education departments to secondary and postsecondary institutions and higher education associations, research organizations and non-profits.

In alignment with these goals, Tracie MacMahon has been named the new Chief Operating Officer. Reporting to Ms. MacMahon are Operations, IT, Corporate Communications, Human Resources, and Higher Education Development and Client Relations. The Clearinghouse is actively recruiting for the new Vice President of Higher Education Development and Client Relations, who will spearhead our higher education initiatives.

The Vice President of Higher Education Development and Client Relations will be responsible for providing strategic direction to all areas within Higher Education Development and Client Relations, including client service, new service development, implementation, and more. This is a critical role that will help the Clearinghouse align all of our higher education resources and activities, yielding greater efficiencies and service improvements for our participating institutions.

"The past three years have seen unprecedented growth and significant infrastructural improvement at the Clearinghouse," stated President and CEO Rick Torres. "Our expectation is that the great momentum that has been established so far in our infrastructure maturation will allow us to meet an ever expanding set of new needs and requests from postsecondary institutions and their students. We will support the institutions' needs of tomorrow by focusing on doing things better, faster, and with low cost. We will also continue to meet the growing demand for more efficient automation as well as the higher education community's need to do more with less. The events discussed here reflect the expansion of our organization and services in a needs-driven way, ensuring that we continue to deliver on the Clearinghouse's mission while providing even greater levels of value-added service to the higher education community."

ABOUT THE CLEARINGHOUSE

The National Student Clearinghouse (a non-profit formed in 1993) is the unique and trusted source for higher education enrollment and degree verifications. The Clearinghouse serves as a single point of contact for the collection and timely exchange of accurate and comprehensive enrollment, degree and certificate records on behalf of its more than 3,300 participating higher education institutions, which represent 96% of all students in public and private U.S. institutions. The Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni.

Through its verification and reporting services, the Clearinghouse saves higher education institutions cumulatively nearly four hundred million dollars annually. Most Clearinghouse services are provided to colleges and universities at little or no charge, including enhanced transcript and research services, enabling institutions to redistribute limited staff and budget resources to more important student service efforts. Clearinghouse services are designed to facilitate Institution's compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, The Higher Education Act, and other applicable laws.

In addition, the Clearinghouse provides accurate, timely enrollment and degree verifications to student loan providers, employers, student credit issuers, the U.S. Department of Education, and others who access its registry more than half a billion times annually.

For more information, visit www.studentclearinghouse.org.

SOURCE National Student Clearinghouse