Feb 14, 2000 - 04:19 PM

Universities Face Headaches After Installing PeopleSoft Software

By Nicole Ziegler Dizon
Associated Press Writer

EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) - When students at Northwestern University wanted to register for winter classes last November, it was supposed to be as easy as point and click.

The university spent millions of dollars installing new software by PeopleSoft so, among other things, students could register online. But as hundreds of students tried to sign up from their rooms, point and click turned into crash and burn.

"When more than a handful of students tried to register simultaneously, the portal just shut down," said Rebecca Dixon, who as associate provost of Northwestern enrollment had to set up an emergency registration process at the school's computer labs.

Northwestern is one of several universities that installed PeopleSoft programs to replace outdated, non-Y2K-compliant computer systems, only to find serious glitches. Problems have delayed tuition bills and financial aid - and registration.

Officials at PeopleSoft, one of the world's top business management software-makers, say the problems were to be expected, especially as large universities scrambled to prepare their systems for the year 2000.

Laura King, PeopleSoft's director of marketing for education and government, said it's extremely complicated to transfer old university systems - fragmented from department to department - into new ones that share records from, for example, the financial aid office and the registration office. King also said data entry errors hindered the software's ability to work at some schools.

Northwestern decided to go with PeopleSoft in 1996, a year before the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company released its student administration software. Since the university was one of the first to test that software, it was natural to have kinks to work out, King said. More than 420 universities use the software.

"It is a young product," King said. "There's lots of nuances to this type of software and this type of technology."

In addition to Northwestern, other schools that have experienced problems include:

-Cleveland State University, which hired a law firm to sort out problems that delayed financial aid for thousands of students and sent costs of installing the programs soaring from an original estimate of $4.2 million to $11 million.

-Boise State University in Idaho, where transcripts were delayed and costs had ballooned to $16 million - almost three times the original estimate - by the end of last year.

-The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where trouble with PeopleSoft software created a loophole for students with poor grades who otherwise would have been asked to leave school for the spring semester.

Northwestern plans to try online registration again this week for the spring quarter. Dixon said students successfully added and dropped classes online last month, so she's hoping registration will work as well.

"It'll be time before you can say that we've got smooth sailing," Dixon said, adding with a laugh, "I hope in my lifetime, and I'm only 60."

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Please understand, this is NOT y2k related.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 14, 2000

Answers

Colleges Complain of Software Kinks

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 14, 2000.

You can add the University of Minnesota to this list.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 15, 2000.