How Can College Departments Increase Funding for Transcription Services?


How Can College Departments Increase Funding for Transcription Services?
Beth Worthy

Beth Worthy

7/10/2023

Academic transcription services are an invaluable learning/teaching aid at all levels of education. In colleges and universities, transcripts enable students and professors to execute collaborative research review data more smoothly.

Regardless of your university faculty or department, academic transcription will be instrumental in expediting data gathering and study. 

For a dissertation or thesis, an accurate educational transcript can help you express your argument in an effectively persuasive way besides aiding in analyzing your research findings.


This blog discusses ways the college department can increase funding for transcription services.

Common Manual Transcription Problems for Students and Professors

1. Eats Into Critical Study/Class/Research Time

Educators and students have classes to attend and research papers to complete. There's little time left to study and manually transcribe their academic audio recordings, a time-consuming exercise.

2. Error-Prone Transcripts

The ability to manually produce accurate transcripts comes from professional training and experience. The resources this effort requires aren't usually a priority for students' and professors' academic budgets.

3. Not an Option for Hard-Of-Hearing Individuals

Students with difficulty hearing class or research recordings often need help with manual transcription.

4. Inadequate Access to Research Data

Not every university has invested in creating enough quality research transcripts. As such, data captured on video or audio remains inaccessible to large student populations.

5. Inadequate Research Collaboration

Accurate text documents are the best data format for scholarly collaboration and sharing. Manual transcripts that are inaccurate or unavailable can inhibit this.

6. Inadequate Resources

Quality manual transcription requires investment in staff, training, equipment, or allocating to professional providers. College departments aren't always able to raise sufficient financing for such projects.  

Also Read: Automated or Manual Transcription Service: Which Is Better?

Benefits of Transcription Services in Colleges and Universities

1. ADA Compliance

Transcription services enable your institution to caption your educational videos or audio as required by the American With Disabilities Act. Non-compliance may attract a first-time penalty of $75,000.

2. Streamlines Sharing/Collaboration

Coursework transcripts are quick to upload online for faster download by students. Similarly, research transcripts facilitate easy data sharing and analysis among students, professors, and researchers.

3. Boosts Search Engine Visibility

You can add relevant keywords to the captions/subtitles on educational videos on your university website. This strategy makes the content more accessible for students to find through search, such as on Google.

4. Improves Coursework Accessibility

Academic transcripts increase the accessibility of your courses to learners with a hearing impairment.

5. Increases Appeal to Online Students

PDF, Doc, or Google Docs transcripts are ideal formats for online course material like tutorials and guides for all students.

Ways to Increase Transcription Services Funding for Your College Department

1. Prioritizing Transcription Services in Their Budget Planning

Increased accessibility, better learning experience, and avoiding ADA fines make transcription services worthwhile investment priorities for colleges.

2. Applying for Grants

Enhanced accessibility to education through transcription is a noble cause worth external backing. It can easily attract funding through grants from sources like the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services or the National Association of the Deaf.

3. Partnering With Transcription Service Providers

For an appreciably low price, this arrangement offers lecturers, students, and the entire college fraternity a limitless supply of quality academic transcripts.

4. Fundraising Campaigns

Fundraisers can target college alums, corporate sponsors, and other stakeholders eager to leave a positive mark on the academic experiences of those following closely in their footsteps.

5. Charging Transcription Fees

Colleges with a well-coordinated academic transcription program can make a case for including transcription service fees.

6. Increasing Awareness

Implement promotional campaigns highlighting the transformational results academic transcription generates for your students and faculty.

Also Read: 

How Can Academic Transcription Services Support International Research Collaborations?

Why GMR Transcription Is the Best Transcription Services Provider for Colleges and Universities

Choosing GMR Transcription Services, Inc. as your academic transcription service provider offers invaluable perks such as:

  • Our U.S.-based, 100% human transcriptionists manually produce 99% accurate academic transcripts.
  • Our transcriptionists sign confidentiality agreements not to disclose your academic video/ audio content and transcript.
  • We use standard encryption to secure your files on our website and servers.
  • Unlike AI, GMRT's human transcriptionists will correctly ID all speakers throughout group recordings.
  • You’ll save costs because our 99% accurate academic transcripts require no further correction.
  • Our fast-turnaround transcription service saves you more time for class sessions or research than manually transcribing.
  • You can customize your academic transcription request based on your unique needs, including preferred digital formats.

How to Get Quality Academic Transcripts From GMR Transcription

Our straightforward transcription process for colleges and universities:

1. Create your GMRT client account on our website.
2. Sign in and upload your files (you can also paste the URL of your online file to import to our transcription portal)
3. Customize your transcription request (by TAT, verbatim/non-verbatim, etc).
4. Please wait while our human transcriptionists transcribe your educational video or audio file.
5. We will notify you when our U.S.-based team completes the transcription job.
6. Pay for transcription services and download the ready-to-use transcript via email or GMR Transcription account.

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Beth Worthy

Beth Worthy

Beth Worthy is the Cofounder & President of GMR Transcription Services, Inc., a California-based company that has been providing accurate and fast transcription services since 2004. She has enjoyed nearly ten years of success at GMR, playing a pivotal role in the company's growth. Under Beth's leadership, GMR Transcription doubled its sales within two years, earning recognition as one of the OC Business Journal's fastest-growing private companies. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two kids.