One of the toughest issues with going to college is figuring out how to pay for it. The University of Arizona is offering a solution. Their Scholarship Universe program started back in 2010. The site matches students with thousands of scholarships available from a variety of donors.
In a new deal with the U of A, Glendale based tech company CampusLogic licensed the technology for commercial use. The deal will allow the software to soon be available to students across the country.
"Tech Launch Arizona is the unit of U of A that focuses on commercializing the inventions and the creations of the university," said Doug Hockstad with Tech Launch Arizona. "The goal is to take things that are created here, usually under research or other projects, and move those out into the world and disseminate those to the world."
CampusLogic is a software company that serves universities throughout the US. They can now sell Scholarship Universe to their existing customer base.
"We worked with them on what was the best relationship model that would allow them to take our solution and imbed it in their own and improve upon it," said Hockstad. "That value flows back to the university. So we have a relationship that allows them to sell it and then revenue goes back to the university, specifically to the originating unit of the university, in this case, the student financial aid department, allowing them to take money and invest that in new solutions."
Right now, Scholarship Universe is available to U of A students once they get accepted. The licensing agreement means the match-making technology will soon help students at other schools find ways to pay for college.
Ken Downs is the project manager for Scholarship Universe at the U of A. He says the program offers students resources in one convenient location.
"I talked to a parent and there was a scholarship for a medical condition, a rare medical condition and they thought they had found every opportunity that existed," said Downs. "They came up to me and said, 'This was the only site that we found this unique opportunity.' So there's lots of unique scholarships that we have in the database that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Then there's a host of the common ones, need and merit based that students might come across somewhere else, but the benefit is these are all in one place so they don't have to spend time going to all these different places."
As part of the deal, the U of A will also have access to other CampusLogic technologies to help students in the future. The program is set to be used by more than 60 schools by 2017.
