No one would argue that much is turbulent in our economy today, and this turbulence certainly extends to educational institutions as well. Yet, even in more stable times, educational institutions are subject to changing enrollment trends and regulatory requirements, regardless of the economic conditions, and their leaders must maintain the institutions’ abilities to perform. In spite of cuts in budgets and resources, colleges and universities must find ways to thrive in the face of the following challenges:
- State colleges are being deluged with record numbers of student applications, while applications for private colleges are declining due to the higher tuition costs at these institutions.
- Community and specialty colleges are showing increases in the numbers of applications, due to lower costs of tuition and a workforce seeking to retool skill sets in preparation for “the next big thing.”
- Business colleges and universities continue to receive student applications from strong international candidates, despite stringent admission and immigration requirements.
- Federal student financial aid reporting requirements are changing in 2009, along with many college board, state and local reporting requirements.

To meet these challenges, educational institutions are faced with a dilemma. They must either (A) continuously modify their current Student Administration systems to address the new requirements, or (B) upgrade their current Student Administration systems to incorporate new requirements.

At the HEUG (Higher Education User Group) Alliance 2009 conference in Anaheim, California, Oracle addressed the educational challenges by stating the following commitments, relative to its PeopleSoft Campus Solutions product:
- Minimize operational disruption and the capital costs that have often been experienced with major upgrades
- Deliver Campus Solutions as a stand-alone instance
- Give customers options for HCM (Human Capital Management) integration

The release of Campus Solutions 9.0 achieves these goals by offering the following for upgrade customers:
- Campus Solutions 9.0 (CS 9.0) will be the base foundation application being supported.
- CS 9.0 will be independent of HCM 9.1 (CS 9.0 remains connected to HCM 9.0).
- Additional changes will be implemented using feature packs. A feature pack is one or more enhancements and/or one or more new features that can be applied directly to the current release, without an upgrade event.
- Campus Solutions products will be migrated to service-enabled technology over time.
- CS 9.0 includes enhancements and features that were originally targeted for CS 9.1.
- HCM 9.1 and CRM 9.1 integration are included.
- Service-enabled core product modules (Admissions, Enrollment, etc.) are included.

For those who choose the Oracle legacy path (option A), the caveats are as follows:
- If you are on Campus Solutions 8.9 or earlier, support will last only the next few years and will vary by support contract.
- Any future government-mandated changes will require software customizations.
- Maintenance to legacy systems will need to address both new requirements and modifications to old requirements.

The key benefit in the upgrade option is no further upgrade events. Anyone who has gone through an upgrade realizes the resources, expenses and time needed for such an endeavor. Limiting that impact by using service-enabled (e.g, Oracle Fusion or Java-based) modules is clearly a step in the right direction, and minimizes the impact on costs and resources.

Tags: economy, ERP, Higher Education, Oracle, student administration, universities

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Oracle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.