LinkedIn Opens Up Service to School Students Through LinkedIn University

LinkedIn has always been known as a social network for professionals who wish to extend their network across the field and for employers or headhunters to seek out potential recruits, but yesterday's announcement essentially has expanded what LinkedIn intends to cover. By introducing LinkedIn University, the company is opening up to kids as young as 13 years old.

The Snapchat users, the Tumblr bloggers, the kids not really thinking about university, let alone getting jobs, are being enticed by LinkedIn to sign up to its network by having pages set up for and maintained by universities and allowing them to connect to current university students, staffers, as well as alumni.

While it doesn't seem likely that kids would want to join a site that is currently packed with adults and their parents and geared towards professional careers, LinkedIn sees things differently. It is aiming for the ambitious go getters to build up their résumés and have them fully peppered with academic and extra-curricular activities and achievements, supposedly to help them select their next academic step prior to making the jump to join the workforce.

Josh Constine wonders over at TechCrunch if what LinkedIn is doing is robbing kids out of their childhood by imposing professional career considerations at such an early age rather than letting them roam free and explore their own interests aside from dealing with school duties. The Next Web however says that LinkedIn already has 30 million students or graduates among its nearly 240 million members which means making a move to directly appeal to these students seems like a natural step.

LinkedIn's head of product management Christina Allen explained the idea of expanding LinkedIn's coverage on the official blog post. "We believe University Pages will be especially valuable for students making their first, big decision about where to attend college. Therefore, beginning on September 12, we will be making LinkedIn available to high school students who can use LinkedIn to explore schools worldwide, greatly expand their understanding of the careers available, and get a head start on building a network of family and friends to help guide them at every milestone".

LinkedIn's University program apparently had netted over 200 universities to have their official pages established on LinkedIn although no word about Indonesian universities thus far. Currently there are nearly 2.5 million Indonesians registered on LinkedIn, up from 1 million back in February 2012.

Among the major social networks, LinkedIn is perhaps the only one among that has yet to aim its sights on to the younger population, unsurprising given the nature of the service. Perhaps by turning its attention to students, LinkedIn can be an alternative to sites like Facebook and Twitter for the more academically oriented students, rather than mixing their more serious interactions with their more casual ones.

As for privacy issues regarding underaged members, LinkedIn has updated its terms and conditions to reflect the upcoming expansion of its service.

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