Computerworld - Technical glitches in a $52 million installation of PeopleSoft Inc.'s applications at Indiana University have left thousands of students without access to promised financial aid and forced officials at the school's eight campuses to implement a series of stopgap measures.
University officials last week said staffers are scrambling to do manual work-arounds as a result of the system problems, which became an issue when classes began late last month. The university estimated that about 3,000 of the 60,000 eligible students arriving at its flagship campus in Bloomington and other locations were denied financial aid by the new system, even though the money had been pledged to them. The majority of the affected students attend Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
The Indiana schools have been working since 1998 to replace administrative systems that in some cases are more than 20 years old with versions of the PeopleSoft Enterprise product line tailored for universities. The loan-processing problems arose following the installation of the financial aid module in PeopleSoft's Campus Solutions 8 package of applications.
"As is often the case with a systems implementation of this size and scope, the first time some modules have been used [has] not been without complications," Norma Holland, an associate vice president at Indiana University, said via e-mail.
Holland said the glitches weren't caused by "the system proper" but apparently surfaced "at those places where fine-tuning was needed to align the university's business processes to the system specifications and functionality." She added that the start of classes limited the amount of time that was available for comprehensive testing of the financial aid software as well as end-user training.
To compensate for the unexpected shortfall of financial aid funds being disbursed to students, the university has had to dip into its reserve accounts and issue no-interest, short-term loans to help cover tuition and other expenses, said spokeswoman Sue Williams. School officials have also taken other steps, such as asking landlords not to charge students interest on late rent payments and letting students draw money from the bursar's office account to pay for textbooks.
The glitches in the PeopleSoft-based financial aid system have primarily affected students at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
The exact origins of the financial aid processing problems are still being investigated. But Williams said it appears that most of the problems were caused by interface issues between the PeopleSoft application and the loan systems at lending institutions such as the Student Loan Marketing Association, better known as Sallie Mae.
The university previously deployed PeopleSoft's human resources software
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