New for DeVry: Four-Year Degrees
Corrections or additions?
These articles were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on July 14,
1999. All rights reserved.
‘Net Bill Paying: Paytrust
Flint Lane and Ed McLaughlin think they have the
answer to everyone’s paperwork dilemma. Just have all your bills sent
to your virtual bookkeeper, who scans them onto your personal web
page. Pay them whenever you want, or instruct your bookkeeper to pay
them for you. You don’t touch the bills, write the checks, or lick
the stamps, but if you want to review your accounts, all your bills
are on your web page. The service, called Paytrust, costs $7.95 per
month and is available now. A demonstration is at https://www.paytrust.com.
Both Lane (a 1988 Rensselaer graduate) and McLaughlin (Wharton, Class
of 1987) had worked at Logic Works. Last October, when Logic Works
was sold to Platinum Technologies, they started Secure Commerce Services.
In January they began testing the service, and June 29 they launched
it. Soon they will start billboard ads, radio ads, and direct mail.
The company now consists of 17 employees and has funding from AT&T
Ventures and Spectrum Equity. It will expand at Princeton Commerce
Center in September.
Banks are doing electronic banking, and other companies are offering
bill paying online, but McLaughlin and Lane claim that no other company
offers a service where the consumer can get all bills logged into
one private web page and never touch paper.
— Barbara Fox
Secure Commerce Services, 29 Emmons Drive. 609-720-1818;fax, 609-720-1819. Http://www.paytrust.com.Top Of PageSarnoff Layoffs for ProfitLast week the Sarnoff Corporation sounded an alarmthat had long been silent — the layoff alert — and it cutstaff by nearly 10 percent. About 80 people — including a fewwho were to retire anyway — will be leaving in mid August. Thesecuts are supposed to boost the profit margin in Sarnoff’s core business:contract research for other institutions and companies.Contract research is certainly not the only card that Sarnoff plays.It makes money from licensing new technologies and also from leveragingother technologies to start, and get equity in, such venture companiesas Orchid Biocomputer, Delsys, and Sensar.”This amounts to an attempt to make our core business stand onits own,” says spokesperson Tom Lento. “We took this as anopportunity to set a new goal, to get a 10 percent return on revenuesin our core business by next March.”Such a high profit margin is unheard of at colleges and universities,where most contract research takes place. “We are looking at awhole industry in which the margins are actually quite low,” saysLento, pointing to the 2 to 3.5 percent margins typical of academicinstitutions.”If we don’t have a strong core business, it will affect our abilityto do world class research,” says Lento. “We decided we neededto do not just better but a lot better. We didn’t want to be put inthis position again. Because of this shot across the bow, we decidedto take the action.”It was just 12 years ago that the Sarnoff Corporation heaved itselfout of a not-for-profit slough and turned down the for-profit road.Facing the threat of being dismantled, Sarnoff took its legacy ofbeing a television pioneer and remade itself to be the for-profitdivision of SRI International, a nonprofit research organization basedat Stanford University.Virtually alone among its peers, it is a research organization thatsurvives without support from a parent company. Both NEC and Siemens,which have laboratories in the Forrestal Center, are examples of supportedresearch. At academic institutions, research is buttressed by a superstructurethat absorbs such administrative costs as human resources and payroll,and it also benefits from the “free labor” of graduate students.These layoffs are not the first nor did they cut the deepest. Retoolingtoward the self support goal, Sarnoff reduced its workforce from 1,250to a low of 600, and it stabilized at 800 in 1997. Profitable since1993, it set the goal of being a $1 billion company by 2005 (U.S.1, April 7, 1997).Because it is a privately held for-profit firm, Sarnoff does not releasecomplete financial statements, but it claimed to have revenues of$130 million for 1998. Still, starting in November, it began to losemoney.About one-third of the cuts were from technical staff to emphasizesoftware development over hardware. James S. Crofton, the new chieffinancial officer — Sarnoff’s first — participated in thesediscussions with senior management and board members but did not instigatethe cuts, claims Lento.Crofton directs financial and purchasing functions and is also responsiblefor internal computer services. An alumnus of Michigan State withan MBA from the University of Michigan, he has been chief financialofficer at EA Industries and spent more than 20 years at Unisys Corporation.(Some background: Unisys had hardware as its strong suit. Partly becauseits software was not at the same level, it lost market share in the1980s and suffered drastic cuts.)”He went through the fire at Unisys,” says Lento. “Hewas brought on because he could strengthen our financial condition.”Crofton was out of the office last week and could not be reached bypress time.”Contract research in general is a cyclical business,” saysLento, “which is one of the reasons why we established the twoother business models (licensing its technology and claiming an equitystake in spin-off companies). If there is a recession, contract researchgoes down. We can track fairly closely what will happen 12 to 18 monthsdown the road. Lo and behold, the figures from 12 months ago did showthere would be problems in the future.”Perhaps contract research can be compared to the canaries in the coalmines. When the oxygen supply dwindles, the canaries die first, signalingthe humans to leave the mine. If contract research is down, shouldwe worry about a recession? Lento thinks not: “It has more todo with the nature of our business than the economy in general.”– Barbara FoxSarnoff Corporation, CN 5300, Princeton 08543-5300.James E. Carnes, president & CEO. 609-734-2000; fax, 609-734-2040.Home page: https://www.sarnoff.com.Top Of PageNew for DeVry: Four-Year DegreesIt’s not as though it’s the match box school of truckingoffering bachelors degrees, but DeVry Institute has raised academiceyebrows nonetheless. It belongs to a relatively small group of “proprietaryinstitutions” — colleges that operate for profit — infiltratingthe elite world of higher education, where nonprofit and public institutionshave reigned for so long. In January, however, DeVry became the firstcapitalist college to offer a bachelors degree program in New Jersey.It’s now one of four schools in the state granting bachelors degreesin electronics engineering technology. With an aggressive job placementprogram, and tuition costs at a third of other schools, DeVry mightjust be a force to be reckoned with in higher education.For 14 years, DeVry has been offering non-traditional New Jersey students– returning students, mostly — a range of practical, object-orientedassociate degree programs in everything from accounting to telecommunications.Until now, the state’s Commission on Higher Education, which mustapprove any institution seeking to move to the next level of degree-grantingstatus, had turned down DeVry’s application for a license to grantbachelor degrees in the same programs. This reflects New Jersey’sunusually high standards, says Beth Hyre, a spokesperson for DeVry,rather than the school’s credentials. “New Jersey has always beenconservative and has very strict rules concerning post-secondary education,”she says. “That’s just been its historic position.” In fact,DeVry’s bachelor has already been embraced at 16 other locations outsideof this state.Despite opposition from the Council of Presidents, an advisory committeecomprised of college and university representatives, the commissionfinally approved DeVry’s application for bachelors-degree grantingstatus in electronics engineering technology. The New Jersey Instituteof Technology in Newark was the primary objector, claiming a duplicationof its own program, only 40 miles away. Stevens Institute of Technologyin Hoboken and Fairleigh Dickinson in Teaneck offer the same programsas well.”Having three or four programs in the whole state is a prettylow number,” says Hyre. “We don’t receive taxpayer support,but that’s secondary to the fact that we feel students should havea range of options and a number of excellent programs to choose from.”Angela Suchanic, director of academic affairs at the commission, saysthat because DeVry serves mostly commuting and returning students,it demonstrated a real need for the program.Even more significant is that DeVry passed the commission’s extremelyrigid licensing standards. The school offers 120 credit semester hours,half of which are in general education, and has the required numberof full-time faculty members with PhDs. The library holdings are alsolarge enough to support a bachelors program. “We’re conservativeabout approving anyone,” says Suchanic. “The rules are thesame, whether you’re proprietary or not.”Unlike many public and private colleges and universities, the DeVryprogram runs year-round, allowing students to complete an associatesdegree in a year and a half, and a bachelors in three years. Eachfour-month trimester costs approximately $3,500, and substantial financialaid is available. At roughly $32,000 (excluding housing, meals, andbooks), a complete bachelors degree at DeVry costs slightly more thanthe bill for one year at a private four-year college.Hyre lists even more compelling reasons to study at DeVry. “Thekind of education we deliver is hands-on and career oriented,”she says. “Almost all our courses are labs.” Indeed, the electronicsengineering technology degree is a very business-oriented engineeringprogram that emphasizes product development, technical writing, salesand marketing skills, in addition to math and science. “Engineersare basically conceptual, in that they develop an idea, but the electronicsengineering technologists translates that design into something thatmakes it work,” she says.A proactive career counseling office also places 90 to 95 percentof DeVry students with area employers such as Siemens, Packard, Zenith,UPS and Unisys within just six months. The skills that DeVry teachesare in great demand, says Hyre. “Given the climate in New Jersey,where so many businesses aren’t able to expand because they don’thave the trained workers, it becomes vital that they have the optionto become educated for these jobs,” she says. “We felt thatit was really incumbent upon the state to move forward.”– Melinda SherwoodDeVry Institute, 630 Route 1 North, North Brunswick 08902.Robert Bocchino, president. 732-435-4880; fax, 732-435-4856. Homepage: https://www.nj.devry.edu.Top Of PageRCN Plus Lycos EqualsRCN placed in front of such industry notables as MCI/WorldCom, Teligent,NextLink, and Sprint last month when it was named one of the nation’s100 most dynamic telecommunications companies by Forbes ASAP magazine.Just to prove how prominent RCN is becoming, consider CEO David McCourt’slatest move: an alliance with Lycos Inc. Code-named “Lycos Lighting,”the deal will give RCN’s half a million subscribers access to a personalportal start page called “My Lycos” with personalized news,weather, shopping, and E-Mail.RCN, it seems, had been preparing to strike Internet gold all along.The company’s trademarked True Local Network, a broadband fiber opticplatform capable of offering a full suite of communications servicesincluding voice, video and high-speed Internet, was built specificallyto provide infrastructure for Internet-related services yet to come.According to the company’s annual report, all of RCN’s customers combineduse only 20 percent of the network’s potential.RCN is unique among major players in the telecommunications industrybecause it offers service to residential consumers only. It targetsthe densely populated areas between Boston and Washington D.C. thatcomprise 40 percent of the nation’s residential communications marketin only 6 percent of its geography. RCN will soon launch facilities-basedservices in the San Francisco and San Jose area using $2.5 billionraised in part from Chase Securities Inc. and a public equity offeringled by Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch.Although RCN stock has remained relatively stabile, the NASDAQ showeda ten percent climb in the week of the announced alliance. Lycos stock(LCOS) also gained.– Melinda SherwoodRCN Corporation (RCNC), 105 Carnegie Center, Suite300, Princeton 08540. David C. McCourt, chairman and CEO. 609-734-3700;fax, 609-734-7551. Home page: https://www.rcn.com.Top Of PageDeathsFrancis G. Rigelon, 42, on July 14. He was a supervisorwith the Hibbert Group.John H. Frazee Jr., 39, on July 9. He had been an autobroker and parts manager at Quakerbridge Porsche/Audi.Corrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
