THE AJU WAY
Andrew Jackson University was established in 1994 and gained accreditation in 1998; this is a fairly impressive feat. To go from establishment to accreditation in the span of four years means the founders of the University had done an excellent job of putting together a good school with strong programs.
The founding management team also took the University through its first successful reaccreditation in 2002, once again proving the school was solid.
In 2004, the founders came to the conclusion they did not have the time or the resources to take the University to the next level. At the time, AJU was a 100% correspondence college and was not well-marketed, nor savvy in the technology of the growing online learning environment. The founders feared the market was passing them by and they didn’t have the answers.
On June 10, 2005, Joe Schmoke (AJU'S CEO) and I came on board, along with a group of investors who brought in much needed capital. Joe and I are seasoned business veterans who know how to market, operate and build businesses.
Since June 10, 2005, we have moved forward with a strategy that is, I believe, unique to education. We are not interested in using the same online education playbook almost everyone else is using – you know, the one calling for extensive internet marketing and expensive lead generation. Our strategy since 2005 has been to develop and foster strategic partnerships which allow us to reach potential students at a very low to zero cost.
Our first partnership was with Brian Tracy International, an entrepreneurship and training organization with over 400,000 email list partners. The second partnership was with Jeff Rubenstein and his company Advanced Public Safety. Both of those companies became early education “sponsors" and we launched the Brian Tracy and APS scholarship programs.
On the technology side, we have had a coherent and solid strategy since we took over in 2005. With a background in software and web development, we've spent a significant amount of time developing our own software and LMS tools to enable us to be 100% online and 100% paperless in our operations. Simply put, our technology strategy puts us ahead of the market. So far ahead, our 2007 accreditation site-visit team struggled with our paperless record-keeping concept because they had never seen such used before.
As a business, we have not stopped there – we have continued in the "forward-thinking" mode.
In 2007, we changed our business “mantra” and created the Take Education Anywhere program. The idea here is online education is yesterday – it is static, using technology to do the same thing the same way. We are interested in moving beyond that. Much of the Take Education Anywhere program has been developed in-house by our Technology Coordinator, Jarrod Morgan. Jarrod is a veteran of the social network community, having run his own company (Slamwire) and a real estate social networking company (realtorclix). Since late 2006, Jarrod and I have been planning the next steps to Take Education Anywhere through the use of handhelds, social networking, cell phones, webcams, and the other tools that technology offers us today.
So – is there a catch? No. This is simply the “AJU Way”. We provide high quality and affordable education! And...not charging tuition was the next logical step in our evolution.
So jump on board and let the "AJU Way" help you Take Education Anywhere...
Happy studying,
Don Kassner
The founding management team also took the University through its first successful reaccreditation in 2002, once again proving the school was solid.
In 2004, the founders came to the conclusion they did not have the time or the resources to take the University to the next level. At the time, AJU was a 100% correspondence college and was not well-marketed, nor savvy in the technology of the growing online learning environment. The founders feared the market was passing them by and they didn’t have the answers.
On June 10, 2005, Joe Schmoke (AJU'S CEO) and I came on board, along with a group of investors who brought in much needed capital. Joe and I are seasoned business veterans who know how to market, operate and build businesses.
Since June 10, 2005, we have moved forward with a strategy that is, I believe, unique to education. We are not interested in using the same online education playbook almost everyone else is using – you know, the one calling for extensive internet marketing and expensive lead generation. Our strategy since 2005 has been to develop and foster strategic partnerships which allow us to reach potential students at a very low to zero cost.
Our first partnership was with Brian Tracy International, an entrepreneurship and training organization with over 400,000 email list partners. The second partnership was with Jeff Rubenstein and his company Advanced Public Safety. Both of those companies became early education “sponsors" and we launched the Brian Tracy and APS scholarship programs.
On the technology side, we have had a coherent and solid strategy since we took over in 2005. With a background in software and web development, we've spent a significant amount of time developing our own software and LMS tools to enable us to be 100% online and 100% paperless in our operations. Simply put, our technology strategy puts us ahead of the market. So far ahead, our 2007 accreditation site-visit team struggled with our paperless record-keeping concept because they had never seen such used before.
As a business, we have not stopped there – we have continued in the "forward-thinking" mode.
In 2007, we changed our business “mantra” and created the Take Education Anywhere program. The idea here is online education is yesterday – it is static, using technology to do the same thing the same way. We are interested in moving beyond that. Much of the Take Education Anywhere program has been developed in-house by our Technology Coordinator, Jarrod Morgan. Jarrod is a veteran of the social network community, having run his own company (Slamwire) and a real estate social networking company (realtorclix). Since late 2006, Jarrod and I have been planning the next steps to Take Education Anywhere through the use of handhelds, social networking, cell phones, webcams, and the other tools that technology offers us today.
So – is there a catch? No. This is simply the “AJU Way”. We provide high quality and affordable education! And...not charging tuition was the next logical step in our evolution.
So jump on board and let the "AJU Way" help you Take Education Anywhere...
Happy studying,
Don Kassner
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