Capstone · Launch the campaign

Capstone is priced per faculty seat, not per student. This matches how the budget actually flows in academic departments.

Starter: $18,000/year. Up to 5 faculty seats, single department.

Growth: $42,000–$78,000/year. 10–25 faculty seats, multi-department, includes the Capstone authoring tool and TA portal.

Enterprise: $96,000+/year. Unlimited faculty across the institution, includes accreditation reporting (ABET, AACSB, etc.).

If they push back on per-faculty pricing, anchor on the cost of one tenured faculty member running an industry capstone manually — typically 6–8 hours/week of unpaid coordination work. We replace that.

"Faculty already do this themselves." Yes, and they hate it. Surveys we've run show faculty spend 6–8 hrs/week on industry coordination they didn't sign up for. Capstone removes that work, not the pedagogy.

"Industry projects don't fit our curriculum." We're not asking you to redesign the syllabus — Capstone slots into existing project-based courses (senior design, business strategy, capstone seminars). The course outcomes don't change; the source of projects does.

"Faculty governance will block this." Engage the curriculum committee EARLY. Propose a one-semester pilot in 1–2 willing departments. Don't try to push institution-wide approval at first — that's a 12-month battle. Pilot data wins curriculum committees.

"How do we grade student work on real industry projects?" Faculty grade as they always have — rubrics, deliverables, presentations. Industry partners provide feedback but don't grade. We have rubric templates available; CSM walks through them.

"What course types fit Capstone best?" Senior design, business strategy capstones, MBA practicums, computer science final projects, marketing capstones. Anything that's already a project-based course.

"How does industry IP work?" Default: students retain IP for portfolio use; companies get a non-exclusive license for the work product. Custom IP arrangements available — needs faculty + general counsel sign-off.

"Can we use this for graduate programs?" Yes — MBA practicums and graduate capstones are some of our highest-engagement use cases. Premium pricing applies (per-faculty rate is the same, but committed seat minimum is higher).

"What's the time commitment for faculty?" ~2 hours/week during a semester. Mostly project intake (week 1), midpoint check-in (week 6), and final presentations (week 14). We handle the rest.

"What about ABET / AACSB reporting?" Built into Enterprise tier. Auto-generates work-product evidence and learning-outcome traces for accreditation visits.

RealitySim / SimulationLab — Use simulated case studies, not real industry projects. Easier to deploy but lower student engagement and weaker industry relationships. We win on real-world stakes.

Faculty-built networks — Many faculty have personal industry contacts they pull from. This works for one or two professors but doesn't scale across a department. We're the institutionalization layer.

Practera (Capstone-adjacent) — Comparable on faculty-side workflow, weaker on industry-network depth. Strong in Australia and UK higher ed.

Internal LMS workflows — Canvas/Blackboard can technically host capstone-style courses, but lack industry sourcing. The industry partner pipeline is what we offer; the LMS handles the rest.

Faculty-led deals require different probing than career-services deals:

1. "Which department is most likely to pilot this — and who's the faculty champion there?"

2. "What does your current senior-capstone or final-project workflow look like?"

3. "What would have to be true for the curriculum committee to approve this in one semester instead of three?"

4. "Is your accreditation visit cycle a driver here? When's the next one?"

5. "What's the dean's read on industry-integrated curricula? Pro, con, neutral?"

6. "If we ran a one-semester pilot in one department, what would 'success' look like?"

Always identify: faculty champion, dean-level air cover, curriculum committee timeline, accreditation pressure (if any).

Faculty are skeptical of vendor-speak. Match their register.

Use academic vocabulary appropriately: "pedagogy", "curriculum", "learning outcomes", "rubric", "scaffolding". Avoid sales-y synonyms.

Reference specific course types and faculty workflows. "Senior design" beats "capstone courses" in eng schools; "practicum" beats "applied project" in MBA contexts.

Defer to faculty expertise. Don't tell them how to teach — show how Capstone removes administrative friction so they can teach better.

Sentences average 14–20 words for faculty audiences. They expect more nuance and qualification than career-services audiences.

Reference research and outcomes data when available. Faculty respond well to evidence; less well to anecdote.

Faculty audience tripwires:

— Never call faculty "users" or "stakeholders". They are faculty. — Never imply Capstone "automates" teaching. It removes admin work; pedagogy stays human. — Don't compare to "the way industry works" as if industry is the standard. Faculty don't see industry as the gold standard for learning design. — "Disrupt" is a swear word in academia. Avoid completely.

Never imply features we don't have: — Capstone does NOT auto-grade. Faculty grade. — Capstone does NOT replace LMS. It complements Canvas/Blackboard, doesn't replace. — No native AI tutor. We have AI matching for projects-to-students, not student tutoring.

Never: — Promise specific accreditation acceptance without legal review (ABET, AACSB requirements vary). — Make claims about faculty workload reduction without our published case data. — Quote per-student pricing — Capstone is per-faculty, full stop.