A new option has been added to the registration and academic records menu on Banner Web.
The “National Student Clearing House Enrollment Verification” link provides an alternate method of enrollment verification for students while offloading paperwork for the university registrar.
The National Student Clearing House works online with colleges and universities to provide the services which are offered by the registrar’s office.
The non-profit organization offers services such as degree verification and enrollment verification to schools free of charge, said Kathleen Dugan, marketing director at the National Student Clearing House.
“We provide services to colleges and universities to help them offload a lot of their record keeping and verification responsibilities,” Dugan said.
Dugan said the National Student Clearing House, which was established over 10 years ago, provides 91 percent of all enrollment data from over 2,700 colleges and universities and provides information to over 10,000 companies or organizations annually.
MSU has had a contract with the National Student Clearing House since 1997, but the contract was expanded in December 2003, said Butch Stokes, university registrar.
“We modified our agreement … to send all historical degree information to them, because in return, they agreed to provide our students with free verification services,” Stokes said.
Enrollment verification is required to maintain financial aid, federal grants, student loans and insurance discounts, Dugan said.
Degree verification is a new service in the contract that allows potential employers to verify applying student’s information.
The service costs a small fee, but prevents employers from having to contact the university registrar.
The service has already been used more than 100 times in December and almost 200 times in January, Stokes said.
“It made sense to put all of this information in a place where it can be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Stokes said.
Dugan said students do not need to worry about the security of their private information because the organization respects all privacy and confidentiality laws.
“We’re very strict about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects students’ privacy rights,” Dugan said.
The organization also offers a service called the “Student Self-Service.” It provides students with the ability to track all actions performed by the clearing house on the student’s behalf. They can print enrollment certificates, view enrollment history and even track student loans, Stokes said.
Scott Maynard, associate director of the Career Center, said that a program like the National Student Clearing House would be a convenience to many employers.
“A major employer could really utilize the service,” Maynard said, “It could give the student an advantage in some cases.”