When I was a freshman in college (2010), the iPhone was really just starting to become mainstream. I remember having a really crappy old Palm Pilot (not a retrospective look, it was crappy even at the time), and being amazed at how much easier my life became with the iPhone. But for some reason tech was not improving school in the same way. With a better understanding of technology and graduation still a recent memory, I wanted to make a list of problems I had in college that could have been improved with software.

1. Course Management – Columbia used a system called Courseworks for classes to manage their online materials. This thing was an eyesore, impossible to navigate, and logged users out literally every 15 minutes. A well-designed course management system that is easier to use + has built in data viz/analytics capabilities would help both students and teachers.
2. Class Intelligence: Making Classes Easier To Research – At Columbia we relied on a student-made “yelp for professors” where reviews were older than dial-up. A full analytics platform understanding grade distribution, HW load, and sample prior curriculums would keep motivated students signing up for classes and lessen the massive exodus that happens from classes in the first week. This could work in a simple “input data, get access to the database” type of model, or should just be an effort from the school itself. Blackboard Analytics and Oracle provide a suite for schools to use to analyze this, but none of these products are student facing (probably to prevent students from avoiding tougher majors or flocking to the “grade boosting”classes).
3. Picking Classes – We had a lottery system for the designated time you could pick classes. However, if I wanted to take a class my friend was dropping out of, I actually had to sit side-by-side with them, watch them drop it, refresh the page, and pray to any deity listening that it would be open in the 5 second window after they dropped the course.
4. Mobile Friendly…Anything – While I was at the school not a single site was mobile friendly and no apps were built by the school. This was a nightmare. Considering my password had to be 10 characters, lower and upper case, with at least a weird symbol or two, logging onto pages and squinting to read was a huge problem.
5. Transferring Unused Meals – There were people at school who could not afford the meal plan, and had trouble getting all the meals they needed. At the other end, there were people who would dedicate and entire meal swipe to an extra parfait “because they might as well since they had extra meals”.  There should have been a better way to connect people who needed meals with those who had extra.
6. Managing Club Financials – As VP of the governing board for club finances, I saw firsthand how ludicrous this entire system is and how much money is wasted/falls through the cracks as a result. Clubs didn’t have accurate ways to track spending, archaic university payroll systems meant students got reimbursed after months, and accounting principles for any student governing body were based on Google Docs. When I asked to personally see the account history of clubs spending, I found that it was ENTIRELY STUDENT INPUT. You can imagine how up to date this information was.
   What’s needed is one congruous system where clubs input their funding needs and can see it pass through the steps of administrative approval with an ETA for reimbursement, along with a separate tab for details of their account (amount left, previous expenditures, etc). This program should be as seamless as TurboTax is for taxes, a set of questions which populates the necessary information for the back end to review.
7. Buying/Selling Textbooks – This is a problem as old as universities themselves. Tons of companies have tried to fix this problem (Valorebooks, Chegg, etc.) but the problem is book editions always get “updated” (the biggest scam of all time). One of the most magical things I ever received was a PDF that detailed every change between the 6th edition of my calculus textbook and the 7th.
8. Cooking Was A Pain, Meals Were Expensive: Meals plans were overpriced, eating out every day was unhealthy, and who had time to learn how to cook? If only companies like Blue Apron, Munchery, and Platejoy had existed back then…I might be able to cook more than cereal today.
9. Getting Side Cash: There are tons of one-off tasks to be done at universities, and many cash-strapped students willing to do them. Whether it be data entry, a psychology study, or more skill specific tasks like debugging software or editing a paper, there was no good to connect the supply and demand here. Companies like Campus Jobs, Bellhops, and to an extent SnagAJob and TaskRabbit are attempting to fix this issue.
10. Financial Aid and Loan Repayment:  I was fortunate that I never had to deal with this, but many of my friends did and complained of the lack of transparency, confusing terms, and poor organization of the websites. Many had to pay fines for late payments unknowingly, or had families that were not proficient in English and struggled to deal with these forms. Companies like SoFi and CommonBond are providing alternative, more transparent ways to approach student loans.
11. Finding a Job/Internship: This is probably one of the toughest problems to tackle. As someone not going into pre-professional fields, finding a job and internship was incredibly hard. I found my current job at CB Insights by almost blind luck, even though I had the right background! Connecting/alerting students to job opportunities that match their skills seems like a data issue, which is something I could see LinkedIn doing a better job at.
12. Selling Dorm Goods: Have you ever walked through a campus during move out days? People throw out perfectly good chairs, fans, air conditioners, etc. because it’s too much of a hassle to bring it home. And yet people buy those same exact items 3 months later when school is back in session. It’s a waste all around. Having an “On-Demand” Craigslist would be ideal, where you could scan for items that were ready to be sold immediately.

I went to school at Columbia University and recognize that each person’s college experience is unique. I hope this post will encourage others to reflect on their own years and add their perspectives on problems that I may have never encountered myself. If you have things that should be added, tweet to me @nikillinit.