Everyone in the industry knows that Education has to change. But what does it have to be?

For that we first need to realize what’s wrong with the current system. This video is by far the best attempt I have seen at analyzing why current education system is no longer relevant.

What do you think?

We deal with a lot of Alumni associations and managers. Most of them have websites. And majority of those understand the value of the network they have created.

To leverage this value, they create a website which has “Alumni Directory”. The idea is noble, unless, some web designer makes all the information available like it was a public directory.

We regularly come across alumni websites which have personal data of alumni community available for public.

Once such blaring case is a high profile school in Mumbai. You will find high profile people from Bollywood, Politics and Business in their alumni list. The sad part is that they have done very little to protect their personal information. Entire alumni list is available online – without any authentication. I could run a script and get the entire data neatly in excel format.

Right from Shashi Tharoor to Rishi Kapoor to Neville Wadia, we can see them all.

The right way is to have the directory accessible only to their alumni via a secure login system. That’s when networks become secure as well as powerful.

It is said that best days of our lives are school days.

We remember all the great times that we had when we were kids when we meet our old friends. It’s Reunion time. Organizing a reunion has always been a tricky affair – mainly because we never get to everyone in our batch, let alone the entire school/college.

Then, there are those who receive invitations very late because most of these invites are passed in a chain format and on general purpose social networks like Facebook.

The Alumni Portal gets a shiny new backend.

This backend not only provides visual appeal and simplicity but also helps speed up the routine tasks that an Administrator has to do.

Check out the screenshots.

As always, this portal is ever-improving.

Students these days have got immense pressure on themselves and therefore there arises a need of a community where the entire group of Students can come together and share and explain the problems which they come across during their academic year. Joining student communities is not only beneficial in terms of solving the problems related to their College projects during the academic year, but it may also be helpful for the students in organising some creative events or extracurricular activities for themselves where the students can have an opportunity to showcase their talents not in only in front of their seniors but also to the entire college faculties. Every University has a Alumni Association in it where the head of the association plays an important role in taking major decisions regarding the Benefits of the students. The year 2012, we witnessed a major chaos amongst the students where one of the Question papers got leaked and the university now has decided to take a re-examination of the leaked paper. Here in this case the entire Students committee came together in filing a petition to the university against re-examination.

The best things in life come in threes; like friends, dreams and memories, someone once observed.  And how true has been this observation. The thing about old friends is that we get so used to them being around, we get so comfortable with them that we do not notice their flaws any longer.  Our memories with them always bring joy to our hearts and smiles on our faces.

These friends can be from our school or society or your colleges.  Fate can at time be cruel to us and make us get separated from our friends.  Our buddies become distant friends and our interactions may now get reduced to ‘liking’ or ‘commenting’ on their status updates and wishing them on their birthdays.  In this age of technology, physical space between two people may be anything but that in digital space is only that of a click.  So our tweets and posts manage to convey our feelings to one another to some extent.

Your Alumni are all the students who have passed out from any course of your institute.  By any course, we mean any full time or part time core or non-core course that you as an institute have offered to the public.  A simple internet search would lead you to numerous training programs on networking skills. You may also find in the curriculum of many management institutes that ‘business networking’ is an elective for those who wish to ‘crack super deals’ with high-profile clients.  As a management institute, you need to be in touch with all your stakeholders as well. And your alumni association is an important part of this group of stakeholders.  Why do you think you should bother with connecting with your alumni at all?  They have of course taken their inputs and passed out from their courses and your duty as a management institute has been done.  So, why then invest in reconnecting with your ‘ex-students’?

There is an explosion of management institutes in the last decade all over the world.  The reasons are many, some of them being the unrestricted access to knowledge sharing by industry experts, social networking opportunities, industrial visits,  multiple job offers and considerable higher pay.  Aspiring management graduates get to know in a regulated and simulated environment what the corporate buzz is all about.

The curriculum is also evolving in these management institutes to include more contemporary subjects such as entrepreneurship, creativity, talent management, microfinance as well as modern technology such as ERP, virtual technology and the like.  Most of the management institutes have industry experts, subject matter experts and university officials on their board of studies who review the curriculum periodically and propose relevant changes.  A good idea would also be to include some of the alumni of the institute on such a alumni community to propose changes in the curriculum.

When clients talk about Alumni Software or Alumni Website, they often talk only about features. One of the most important things is how this power is delivered to you.

Any website or software with tons of features needs great servers to keep it going and delivering exceptional user experience. All this would cost more than the software itself.

But thanks to our team, we have worked overtime to take The Alumni Portal on cloud.

Here are some reasons why you should get involved in the private social networking of the Alumni Association:

• Networking: The Alumni Association helps you to stay connected and bond with the fellow alumni and provides you with a networking opportunity. The association helps you to stay connected and keeps you in loop with your Alma Mater. You can now Talk to your faculty and the Current Students too. This association helps to create reunions where you can meet your buddies and have fun.

• Pride: Celebrate your Institution’s achievements and be proud of it to create an Alumni Association.

• Support: You can support your Institution in many ways – by lending your services, volunteering and helping recruit students. You can also provide your institution with monetary support.

Points of comparison between The Alumni Portal and Facebook:

Exclusivity:

This is the biggest drawback. No one thinks about their school/college when they are on Facebook.

Event Calendar:

Facebook has an events.

Wondering what we’ve been up to lately? We’ve been working on developing a rich and modern Admin backend for this feature packed piece of Alumni Software.
Currently, the Administrator can control all the users and content on the portal in the same interface (called front-end of the software).

An Alumni Association acts as a bridge between the old and the new blood of any institute.  It helps to strengthen the bonds between the institute and the students who have benefited from the institute.  It does the institute a lot of good to keep in touch with its student base who have grown and developed over the years and can give back to their Alma Mater.  Opportunities for job placements, donations, sponsorships, faculty positions are also possible through such platforms that help connect alumni members with the institute and present students.  So, ever thought of having an Alumni Association Website for your institute, but don’t know how to start?  So, here’s your answer.