LinkedIn is looking to capture a younger audience with University Pages, a new feature geared towards helping students explore their college options in ways that go well beyond those available to their parents.
More than 200 academic institutions, including NYU, the University of Michigan, UCSD and some notable international universities, have already adopted the new pages. Thousands of additional schools will get access to pages in the coming weeks.
The pages provide basic information about the schools, official university updates, and—perhaps most interesting—opportunities for students to identify and even contact other students and alumni. LinkedIn isn’t shy about its ambitions in this area: “Transform those brilliant, creative, hard-working people you met (or will meet) on campus into a lifelong professional network,” its official announcement notes.
To pave the way for the college-bound, LinkedIn also lowered its minimum age requirement for users to 14 in the U.S. High school students can join the network as of September 12.