Peter is an enrollment management VP at a large institution. In the winter and spring, he's focused daily on his enrollment yields and is under a lot of pressure to reach the targets he presented to the board last year. He meets with his staff daily to understand where they are and what tweaks they might have to do with financial aid and other incentives to get his number.
Thursday afternoon, he gets a call from Sally, the financial aid director, giving him a heads up about a recent article in the New York times about the growing financial aid fraud in distance programs as reported by the US Department of Education. She's concerned that their institution could get bitten like those schools in the article. "All they need to do is apply, get accepted, get the award and split. They can buy the names. It's not that hard." Sally also wonders if this identity scamming and use of diploma mills to create false applications could spill over into awards for on-campus students, which is a considerably higher portion of their budget than the online student aid. Peter's also concerned about loosing their donors' trust if this happens or possibly their eligibility for federal awards. They agree to set up a task force to consider identity verification.
Peter next gets a call from Walter, the registrar. Walter is in charge of the integrity of their programs, including the distance education degrees which are very popular. He too read the New York times article about financial aid fraud, but was more interested in the degrees awarded. "Is it an issue if we award a degree to someone and we're not sure the person even participated in the education process?" Walter was worried about the reduction in prestige if there was a high profile case of awarding a degree to the wrong person. Peter is too, but it seemed less of an issue than the one Sally brought up. He suggested that Walter join the task force.
Peter then calls, Sue the CIO, and describes the identity verification problem and how they need assurance earlier in the admissions process that the person online is the one reflected in the Admissions system. "It's a tough problem and could cost a lot of time. How can we verify the identity of 20,000 admits before they review their financial aid award, register and come to campus? Somehow, we have to do this earlier." Sue, the CIO, reflects a moment. "So Peter, right now prospects send us their information right? All we're going on is their word that it's theirs, right?" Peter agrees. Sue continues: "So we need to verify them with a third party and get someone to vouch for them, preferably before they apply. Would that help?" Peter very much agrees. Sue goes on: "What if I told you that you could stop giving userids and passwords to prospects (remember all the paper and email stuff you guys do to set that up with each person) and the individuals hitting our application site with these new electronic credentials have been physically identity proofed by at least one trusted organization. Would that help?" Peter heartedly agrees.