Yesterday we linked to an article in The Arizona Republic describing difficulties that the Maricopa County Community Colleges have had installing a new student-information system. The story depicted Maricopa’s project as a financial fiasco, but campus officials say it has been no such thing.
In a letter to Maricopa employees, the colleges’ chancellor, Rufus Glasper, said the information system should be up and running by October. And he argued that Maricopa’s expenditures on the project were in line with what other institutions have spent:Since 1994, the Maricopa Community Colleges have spent a total of $45-million on technology development, with $20-million of that on the current Student Information System project. There is no debate that is a lot of money, yet when you look at the size of our organization (we serve more than 250,000 students per year), and the fact that our systems must accommodate the needs of not one but 10 colleges, Maricopa is well within the range of what has been spent elsewhere.
The full text of Mr. Glasper’s message is available here.—Brock Read
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