More time needed to update old systems

by Brittany Yingling
Staff Writer

Because of Ohio budget cuts, some state universities – including Ohio University – have postponed decisions to upgrade their outdated student information systems.

A student information system is a database that contains information about all students enrolled in a university, said OU registrar Debra Benton.

"It basically has all student information systems and is used for the purposes of recruiting students, to admissions, to scheduling precollege orientations, to registering students, to providing academic transcripts, developing schedules of classes…clear through the graduation process," she said.

When OU changes its SIS, the university also will switch from quarters to semesters, said Hugh Bloemer, chairman of OU's Faculty Senate.

The general life span of a SIS is 10 years, Benton said. And OU's system, purchased in the 1980s and put into use in December 1992, is approaching the end of its span.

OU officials proposed the upgrade for the first time to the OU Board of Trustees at their meeting in September.

But Gov. Bob Taft's announcement of a 6 percent cut in funding to Ohio higher education earlier this month has slowed plans.

OU officials have no detailed information about the upgrade because they are not planning to implement the change for another three to five years, Benton said.

"It's built on old technology," she said. "One of the limitations is that with many student applications, we would like to have them available to students 24 hours, seven days a week."

Other universities also are considering similar changes.

Ohio State University officials cannot upgrade their SIS for another two years, said Gene Schuster, OSU's director of student information systems development.

"This information system was built back in the '60s and has just been added to since then," he said.

The $50 million upgrade would improve the Web features of OSU's current SIS, he said.

"We've been working on a method of adding web services and better data delivery," Schuster said. "I think the major concerns that we have are serviceability and flexibility concerns and that's basically because it's a legacy system built on technology from the '60s."

The upgrade would update the technical base of the system and make it easier to utilize the web, he said.

"I hope it would help the whole community effort better serve faculty, students and administrators," Schuster said.

But Schuster said OSU officials cannot begin to plan upgrades for at least two more years because of the Ohio budget cuts.