Why Students Don’t Apply for Financial Aid

usnews | December 31, 2018

EVEN IF STUDENTS DON'T plan to borrow to pay for college, completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid automatically puts them in consideration for various types of aid, grants and scholarships offered by states, institutions and private funders, making the federal aid form an integral part of accessing higher education.A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, provides some context for why that is, with reasons ranging from the students' perception that they may not qualify for financial aid to the perception that the forms and application process are too burdensome to concerns about debt.The report also finds that completion rates vary by race and socioeconomic status: Completion rates were higher among black students than among white students, for example, as well as among students whose parents had lower levels of education than among students whose parents had higher levels of education. Completion rates were also higher among public school students than among private school students.

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The B2B buyer journey has always been complex. And today, with the ever-changing demands of the modern industry buyer, it has become even more necessary to rethink the buyer journey, creating a future-ready digital experience

Spotlight

The B2B buyer journey has always been complex. And today, with the ever-changing demands of the modern industry buyer, it has become even more necessary to rethink the buyer journey, creating a future-ready digital experience

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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY, CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS

Guild Education Chooses Salt Security for API Security

Guild Education and Salt Security | March 17, 2023

Salt Security, the leading API security company, today announced that Guild Education, the leader in opportunity creation for America's workforce, has chosen the Salt Security API Protection Platform to secure its growing application programming interface (API) ecosystem. Guild relies on APIs for the exchange of private and sensitive student, employer, and school data across its Career Opportunity Platform. With the Salt platform, Guild gains automatic and continuous API visibility, insights into potential data exposure, and API runtime protection to ensure the safety of its customers' critical data. "Guild supports workers, companies, and educational organizations to build new career opportunities and address increasing talent shortages. Keeping employee, employer, and school data secure has always been a top priority," said Julie Chickillo, VP, head of security, Guild Education. "The visibility we get with Salt eliminates blindspots, allowing us to better protect the critical and personal information – including employer eligibility updates, student loan reimbursement data, and program applications – being shared via our APIs." Although Guild looked at other API security solutions, Salt provided the most actionable insights and the most mature platform. Leveraging the robust Salt API security platform, Guild gains: Discovery of shadow APIs – to ensure a complete and accurate API inventory and understand what unknown APIs might exist that could pose security risks Attack prevention – the most proven algorithms in API security to pinpoint attacker reconnaissance activity, even drawn out over days and weeks, and stop attackers before they reach their objective API security testing – to gain vulnerability insights in pre-production, empowering the Guild development team to improve the security posture of its new APIs The Salt Security platform enables organizations to catalog their APIs, see where they expose sensitive data, detect and block API attackers, scan and test APIs, and provide remediation insights that developers can use to harden APIs and improve the security posture over time. Through its patented API Context Engine (ACE) architecture, the platform can identify the early indicators of an attack, stop attackers from advancing and turn attackers into penetration testers, leading to valuable feedback for security teams to identify and eliminate API vulnerabilities. About Salt Security Salt Security protects the APIs that form the core of every modern application. Its patented API Protection Platform is the only API security solution that combines the power of cloud-scale big data and time-tested ML/AI to detect and prevent API attacks. By correlating activities across millions of APIs and users over time, Salt delivers deep context with real-time analysis and continuous insights for API discovery, attack prevention, and shift-left practices. Deployed quickly and seamlessly integrated within existing systems, the Salt platform gives customers immediate value and protection, so they can innovate with confidence and accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. For more information, visit https://salt.security/ About Guild Guild's Career Opportunity Platform enables forward-thinking employers to invest in their employees, unlocking life-changing opportunities for personal and professional growth through education and learning programs, career development and one-on-one coaching. Guild partners with the nation's largest employers — including Walmart, Chipotle, Discover, Hilton, Macy's, Target and The Walt Disney Company — to create cultures of opportunity that will help them attract and retain top talent, and build the workforce of the future. Using Guild's Career Opportunity Platform full of real-world education and learning programs, employees at those companies can gain the skills, knowledge and guidance they need to build a brighter future for themselves and their families — all without paying for tuition or career services on their own. For more information, visit https://www.guildeducation.com/

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TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Clever Launches Multi-Factor Authentication to Help K-12 Schools Secure Sensitive Information With One Seamless Solution

PRnewswire | April 27, 2023

Clever, the platform powering digital learning for more than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools, today announced its new service, Clever MFA+. Designed to help districts facing a growing number of cybersecurity incidents in schools, Clever's new offering protects sensitive data by providing a dual layer of authentication that's easy for administrators and educators to use. "With the growing sophistication of hackers, we designed this tool to support the realities of schools today, offering busy teachers and staff peace of mind," said Mohit Gupta, Group Product Manager at Clever. "Clever MFA+ helps districts prevent malicious account access, meet insurance requirements, and ensure a safe and secure learning environment." In a recent Clever survey, one in four administrators said their district had experienced a hack, phishing incident, data breach, or other cyber attack in the past year. The impact, including cost and learning time lost to get systems running again, is high for K-12 education – on average costing schools $1.6M per ransomware incident. Clever MFA+ serves as a holistic, all-in-one solution that helps districts easily secure access to critical applications: • Staff-and teacher-friendly factors: Clever MFA+ offers a variety of authentication options, including app tokens (TOTP), SMS codes, voice calls and hardware tokens, as well as biometric. • Clever MFA+ into familiar devices and apps: The solution covers Chromebooks and Windows devices, while integrating with Google Workspace, Azure, AD and ADFS and any additional apps available with SAML, OpenIDConnect, or OAuth2. • One, secure Clever login: This new offering means sensitive applications and devices can be protected behind one secure login and with one familiar, trusted single-sign on partner. "Our instructional programs all filter through Clever — and some of our most sensitive information is rostered into those programs. Having a second layer of protection is paramount," said Dylan Jones, Instructional Technology and Data Coordinator at Sunflower County Consolidated School District. "Clever MFA+ provides seamless protection for an app that all teachers and staff are used to and familiar with! We already do identity management, rostering, and the single sign-on Portal with Clever — so MFA just made sense." Clever MFA+ is now available with a low price per staff user per year, and schools benefit from free set-up and support to make adoption seamless and quick. To learn more about Clever MFA+, visit here. The Clever SSO portal for students remains free of charge. Districts can take advantage of built-in MFA functionality to secure the Clever Portal for users with admin access and the existing Clever Badges + Pin functionality to protect students' accounts today. About Clever Clever is on a mission to connect every student to a world of learning. More than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools now use Clever to power secure digital learning experiences. With our platform for schools and a network of leading application providers, we're committed to advance education with technology that works for students everywhere.

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TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Flatiron School Launches Artificial Intelligence Curriculum Enhancements For Students

Businesswire | May 18, 2023

Flatiron School, a global provider of technical education, launched curriculum enhancements designed to teach students how to leverage powerful, emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The curriculum enhancements affect Flatiron School’s four disciplines - software engineering, data science, cybersecurity, and UX / UI product design - and come at a time where AI requirements are increasingly appearing in job descriptions. For the past 10 years, Flatiron School has been committed to keeping curriculum modern, aligning with the ever-evolving tech landscape. Now, as new AI tools emerge, Flatiron School continues to lead tech education in providing students with the skills needed to thrive in today’s job market. “Even as AI reshapes the industry, we expect demand for tech talent to remain strong,” said Kate Cassino, Flatiron School CEO. “The most competitive talent will have the skills needed to unlock the full potential of AI, and that’s why now is the time to invest in our students. Our latest curriculum enhancements empower students with the skills needed to not only excel in an evolving job market, but also to advance the future of tech through innovation.” The enhancements cover topics such as machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and prompt engineering. Students will learn how to use generative AI as a research tool, effectively communicate with AI chatbots, build AI models, and leverage machine learning (ML) for testing. Curriculum enhancements include: • Software Engineering. Discover how AI can help with code debugging, enable code completion, and integrate AI features into apps. Students will also learn prompt engineering and how to successfully correspond with chatbots. • Data Science. Learn the fundamentals of AI theory, including concepts such as data leakage, overfitting, and regularization. Students will also learn scikit-learn (a popular AI library for Python programming language) as well as how to build AI models for text data (also known as natural language processing). • Cybersecurity. Gain experience leveraging AI and machine learning for threat intelligence feeds, vulnerability and penetration testing, and detecting anomalous and behavioral events. Students will also learn how bad actors could leverage AI to crack encryption. • UX / UI Product Design. Explore how to co-create with AI for inspiration, as well as how to analyze potential biases in AI-generated design solutions. Students will also learn about the implications of AI on intellectual property, how to develop user journeys with generative AI, and how to use natural language processing to automate identification of patterns in user data. Taught by instructors with real-world experience, Flatiron School’s courses are offered online or in-person on New York City or Denver campuses. Students can choose full-time or part-time programs, which are paced between 15 and 60 weeks. Upon graduation Flatiron School provides up to 180 days of 1-on-1 career coaching. About Flatiron Since 2012, Flatiron School has been an education innovator, training over 10,000 graduates in software engineering, data science, cybersecurity, and product design. Flatiron School works with students, universities and colleges, and industry-leading companies around the world to provide essential technical training. When it comes to landing a job, Flatiron School graduates have a proven track record of success thanks to experienced instructors and dedicated career coaches.

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