Cutting College Costs

An idea for cutting college costs: Turn around the paradigm of hiring college students from the end of the career to the beginning. Identify those students that are self-starters and incent them with “business scholarships.” This model would be similar to an apprentice idea, where the training is picked up by the company, with a commitment to the company after graduation. It is a successful model employed today by the military, and would substantially cut college costs. Colleges could charge full, non-tuition discounting for the businesses, and then offset the resources on scholarships, etc. that would have went to the star students to the next level of students, dispersing it across the enrollment population.

Nonprofit Use of Blogs

More Websites are utilizing grassroots methods of communication. One of the primary areas of development and activity has been around the use of weblogs, or blogs, as the way of getting information published on the Web. Several blogs are starting to discuss the use of this form of communication and its effectiveness in the not for-profit-world.

One post that I have recently discovered is http://radiofreeblogistan.com/2003/10/03/weblog_strategies_for_nonprofits.html
One of the main issues that I really like in the article that Christian Crumlish published is the idea of having multiple trainees create a blog to follow their progress. In many ways, it becomes an online diary or journal for the experiences that they share.

In a similar way, I believe that many grant driven organizations can improve the impact that their grants make by requiring grantees to keep track of their success through online blogs. This would not only create a vast resource of impact and success, but provide others in similar situations the ability to search and understand the impact that is being achieved.