| UT Holds Public Forums On Tuition Hike
As the University of Texas considers raising tuition once again, education leaders from around the state are meeting to talk solutions for higher education. Those meetings are happening at the Frank Erwin Center to help increase college enrollment around the state significantly. The goal is to increase enrollment across the state by 30 percent from 2005 to 2010. While it is an achievable goal, still, university systems across the state feel they have to increase tuition to stay competitive, so while more students want to go to college, making it affordable is another challenge. Financial challenges, like getting students to apply through Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is just one of the many roadblocks to work through.
Contractor loses La. scholarship account data dating back to 1998
BATON ROUGE, La. -- A Boston-based contractor hired to store and safeguard state scholarship and college savings account data lost most of those records _ including bank account numbers and student and parent Social Security numbers _ during a move, officials say. "We certainly don't want to create any panic. But people should be aware and take the necessary steps," said Melanie Amrhein, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance. "This is backup data off of a mainframe that contains sensitive personal information." Special equipment and software and "sophisticated computer skills" would be needed to get the compressed records from the TOPS scholarship program, START Saving Program, and Free Application for Federal Student Aid, according to a notice posted on the Internet.
Passageways concludes year of innovation, acquisitions
Passageways, a company in Purdue Research Park, is preparing to close the books on a very productive year. The 4-year-old West Lafayette-based firm provides solutions that enhance internal communications for the financial services industry. This fall it added 66 new clients through the acquisition of the Instant Intranet Builder product from Engineered Business Solutions in Houston. Since then, the company has launched new products and been selected to streamline internal communications and data management for additional financial institutions. Passageways introduced its Knowledge Management and Learning Management applications in mid-November at the BAI Retail Delivery Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. "The launch of these two customizable products adds further information management capabilities to the Passageways portal," said co-founder and Vice President Christopher Beltran.
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