Shorelight partners with U.S. universities to create programs that support international students, providing services to help them succeed academically and advance in their careers. A significant challenge we had with our university partnerships was maintaining data integrity — universities needed clear visibility into how well prospective students were progressing toward meeting U.S. enrollment requirements, while Shorelight required accurate tracking of each student’s academic progress post-enrollment. Shorelight’s financial success is tied to students’ academic progress, therefore accurate tracking is crucial for proper billing. Another major data challenge Shorelight encountered was ensuring the integrity of university program information. With over a hundred partner universities, each offering multiple degree levels and unique program requirements, costs, deadlines, and other details, it was challenging to keep university program data consistently aligned with Shorelight’s records. This often led to discrepancies on the consumer side, where students sometimes received inaccurate or conflicting information about a program they were interested in. When I joined Shorelight, I was focused on designing interfaces for our students and education agents and hadn’t yet had the chance to work directly with our university partners. This presented an exciting challenge—a chance to design for a new audience while tackling these important issues for […]