Press Release

DegreeVerify Now The Leading Degree Verification Service In U.S.

275 Post-Secondary Educational Institutions Participating in Service

HERNDON, VA--June 20, 2002 - The National Student Clearinghouse, the nation's largest, most trusted source for post-secondary student degree and enrollment verification services, announces today that its DegreeVerify program has been chosen to provide degree verification services for 275 post-secondary institutions, which grant more than 20 percent of the nation's degrees.

"Reaching this important milestone so quickly after the introduction of our new degree verification service confirms the Clearinghouse as the leading educational verification outsourcer, with DegreeVerify now representing more than four times the enrollment volume of the other two providers combined," said Dan Boehmer, president, National Student Clearinghouse.

DegreeVerify allows college and university registrars to outsource all employer requests for degree verification instead of devoting valuable staff resources to the time-consuming task. Institutions appoint the Clearinghouse as their verification agent, then provide secure access to their degree records via a Clearinghouse hosted repository or a real-time web service. Employers and other authorized parties are then able to verify enrollment and degree data twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week through the DegreeVerify website, www.studentclearinghouse.org, or automatically as an integrated function of their in-house applications. DegreeVerify is free to institutions and cost-effective for employers. The comprehensive service provides greater efficiency, reliability, and security for verifying student degrees, certificates, and other academic achievements, greatly reducing the potential for credential fraud.

The 275 DegreeVerify participants include such well-known institutions as Texas A&M, Auburn University, John Hopkins University, Michigan State University, Cornell University, Brigham Young University, and University of Maryland-College Park. A complete list of participating institutions is available on the DegreeVerify website.

Cornell University reports that DegreeVerify provides a valuable benefit to graduates in addition to the cost savings to the registrar's office.

"Like many academic institutions, our department's goal is to provide our graduates and attendees with the best possible registrar services," said David Yeh, assistant vice president of academic support services at Cornell. "By utilizing the DegreeVerify program, we ensure that Cornell graduates get the immediate recognition they deserve since employers can now utilize the online DegreeVerify site, twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-day-a-week."

The round-the-clock access has also proved beneficial to employers who no longer need to play telephone tag during business hours with registrar offices. "The online accessibility of the data has significantly improved our efficiency," said Thomas Maddaloni, vice president of Carco Group, one of the nation's top ten background search firms. "Our investigators are free to move to other work. I wish we could obtain all of our education verifications from the Clearinghouse."

About the National Student Clearinghouse

The National Student Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization founded by the higher education community, streamlines the student record verification process for colleges and universities, students and alumni, lending institutions, employers, and other organizations. The Clearinghouse maintains a comprehensive electronic registry of student records that provides a single, automated point-of-contact for organizations and individuals requiring timely, accurate verification of student enrollment, degree, and loan data.

Today, over 2,700 colleges, representing 91% of the nation's enrollment, participate in the Clearinghouse. Student loan providers, employers, student credit issuers, student health insurance providers, the federal government and others access the Clearinghouse's registry over 100 million times annually to conduct electronic student record verifications.

For more information about the National Student Clearinghouse, visit www.studentclearinghouse.org.

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