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PRESS RELEASE: JULY 2008

A new website launched today aims to revolutionise the university qualification and employment process. AcademicScore.Com provides a free online tool enabling anyone who has attended a New Zealand university to calculate their Academic Score by simply entering their academic transcript results.

During interviews with a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the New Zealand university system, the co-founders of Academic Score, Jamie Waugh and Harry Silver, discovered that many people were not entirely satisfied with the current system and how it operates. Now the two young social entrepreneurs have developed and launched academicscore.com which they claim will bring transparency and simplicity to a murky and complicated regime.

"The current New Zealand university system is not meeting the needs of the New Zealand public" claims Harry Silver. "After spending several years and tens of thousands of dollars at university, students are graduating into a degree saturated marketplace where an individual’s university achievement is not recognized beyond having a degree or not having a degree. The result is a C’s get degrees attitude and I don't see how that is any good for our knowledge economy!”

Meanwhile with heavy competition for top performing employees, businesses are crying out for a way of discovering university students and graduates who have achieved highly in specific subject areas relevant to their businesses. Academic Score provides the necessary tools to achieve this.

Jamie Waugh explains "People today are being told that they need to go to university to get a degree to get a good job. The problem is that businesses don't always want or need someone who has a degree in order to give them the job. Academic Score recognises that a university education is made up of many parts (papers) and each of these parts has an intrinsic value or weight. The quality of these parts varies greatly between individuals. Currently there is not enough recognition given to the individual parts. For many three or four years of university study boils down to one piece of paper, the degree, this blatantly disregards the value of the parts. Academic Score acknowledges each part and gives credit to the quality of the parts. This increases not only transparency, but also the usability and relevance of a university education, for students, employers and the general public."

High uptake of the site is expected due to its ease of use and positive results during beta testing.

Silver says “I don't see this as an attack on universities, if anything it affirms the value of a university education, it makes the value more understandable. Academic Score intends to democratise the university sector by giving students and employers a tool to interact and communicate in a more effective way.”

Academic Score is completely independent and is not linked in anyway to the New Zealand Government or any political party.

For more information please contact Academic Score.