From the issue dated January 17, 2003
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Giant Cal State Computing Project Leaves Professors and Students Asking, Why?Administrators see efficiencies, but academics fear a loss of controlBy FLORENCE OLSEN The state's economy was rebounding and dot-coms were hot when Charles B. Reed,
The most controversial aspects of the project have been its price tag and the pressure it has put on some campuses to change long-standing academic policies and business practices. Some professors see the project as a tool by which the central administration is exerting much more control over the way they run their programs. For the project, which is known as Common Management Systems, Cal State has made a $30-million commitment to commercial software from PeopleSoft Inc., which sells administrative systems to colleges and corporations. The idea is to bring up-to-date information technology to Cal State's 407,000 students and 44,000 faculty and staff members for less money than the 23 campuses would spend to buy new administrative systems on their own. But the huge project has upset many people, especially faculty- and staff-union leaders, who say it ignores professors' concerns and will result in eliminating staff jobs. "It's just wildly unpopular with faculty to be spending that kind of money when they are canceling sections and the state's in a budget crisis," says Patricia Evridge Hill, an associate professor of history at San Jose State University, which is part of the Cal State system. She is secretary of the California Faculty Association. Officials in the chancellor's office say the $400-million cost of the new management systems is being split between the chancellor's office and the 23 universities, with the latter paying nearly 58 percent, or $230-million, and the office paying $170-million. Last year, Cal State's campus unions took their concerns about the project to the Legislature, which asked the state auditor for a complete review. Depending on the findings, the faculty union would consider seeking legislative redress, Ms. Hill says. Is the standardized-systems approach really saving money? Or, in a time of burgeoning enrollment, is it diverting money that should be used for hiring more professors and offering more classes? Mr. Reed has said he welcomes the audit and expects its findings to be mostly positive. "We've achieved every goal we've set for ourselves. We're not only on schedule, we're ahead of schedule, and we're under budget." If Cal State can finish the overhaul by 2006 and within a $400-million budget, it will have completed the largest systemwide installation of PeopleSoft's business software in higher education. The chancellor says that he is determined to weather the criticism to see the overhaul completed. New systems are needed, he says, not only to provide the online services that students expect, but also because the older systems in use on many of the campuses cannot produce on-the-spot, accurate information that administrators and faculty members need to manage their academic programs. Institutions are "making more demands on these systems than ever before," especially the ones that manage information about students, says Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, who is a visiting scholar at the Claremont Graduate University. For example, the government now wants colleges to keep close track of foreign students. The National Collegiate Athletic Association wants information from athletes' academic records. Meanwhile, giving students and faculty members access to students' information via the Web adds convenience but also complexity and difficulty, Mr. Green says. Some Cal State administrators share faculty members' concerns about the cost. But many of them, including William W. Post, vice provost for information resources on the Chico campus, say the overhaul represents an unavoidable expense. SIS+, Chico's administrative software, from SCT Corporation, was installed about a decade ago and requires an old-fashioned mainframe to operate, he notes. The companies that once supported that software have moved to newer technology and no longer want to spend money on improvements to programs that they consider obsolete. Many of Cal State's universities are in similar situations. They have outdated systems that do not allow students to use the Web to register for classes and that do not let faculty advisers use the computers in their offices to look up students' academic records. Some professors would appreciate that convenience, if their universities could afford it, says Ms. Hill. "I would love to have access to my students' records at a keystroke -- but not at the expense of bare-bones teaching and learning." Standard Procedures The big price tag for the new management systems is not the only aspect of the overhaul that has stirred controversy. The approach that Cal State has undertaken requires all 23 universities to work together to standardize their business practices to a degree that they never have before. Their presidents, including Manuel A. Esteban, president of the Chico campus, have said they are willing. "We are a university with 23 campuses, and it was ridiculous that not only was there no common system throughout the system, but in fact on each campus there were systems that didn't talk to each other," Mr. Esteban says. "It never made any sense." But reaching a consensus among very different institutions is a big challenge, says David J. Ernst, Cal State's assistant vice chancellor for information-technology services. The San Jose campus, which began as a state teachers college and now has 28,000 students and master's-degree programs, is a far cry from the Maritime Academy campus, which enrolls 600 students and offers specialized undergraduate programs in marine-oriented engineering, technology, and transportation. The chancellor's office is using the new administrative systems "to facilitate" the standardization of the institutions, says Victor Garlin, a professor of economics at Sonoma State University, which is part of the Cal State system. Mr. Garlin is president of the faculty bargaining unit there. "At a certain point, it becomes difficult to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg," he says. But policy makers, and not the new software systems, he believes, are the force pushing the institutions toward developing consistent degree requirements and other standardized policies. "The faculty is not interested in creating artificial hardships for students," many of whom transfer from one Cal State institution to another, Mr. Garlin adds. But faculty members "don't like the idea that the CSU is essentially one institution," which he says is the idea behind the administrative-systems project. Cal State is working with a modified version of the standard-issue software from PeopleSoft. This "baseline code," as Cal State calls it, is being created by a central programming group in the chancellor's office. The code's customized features and functions are selected through a process of requesting and approving modifications to what the programmers refer to as "PeopleSoft vanilla." The process begins at the campus level, with committees making recommendations to a system-level panel. Cal State is just beginning that difficult phase with the student systems, says Hilary J. Baker, senior director of the project. So far, she says, the most substantial modification is the addition of a customized interface to CSUMentor, a commercial Web-based admissions system. That modification alone cost between $70,000 and $80,000, on top of the $30-million that Cal State paid to license the original software, but it was essential to the admissions processes for all 23 campuses, she says. In other cases, the universities, including Cal State's Fresno campus, have changed some of their traditional business practices rather than pay additional money to modify the new systems, says Benjamin F. Quillian, vice president for administration and chief financial officer there. "Many of the changes we have made to accommodate the baseline have actually improved our business practices in the financial area, in the way we recruit employees, and in student admissions," says Mr. Quillian, who is chairman of the Common Management Systems executive committee. For example, Fresno dropped its practice of using Social Security numbers as its primary identifiers and switched to PeopleSoft-generated identifiers, which eliminated a security risk inherent in the old systems. Tail Wagging the Dog? Managers of the Cal State project say they are trying to minimize modifications to the PeopleSoft systems and, at the same time, avoid a tail-wagging-the-dog situation in which information technology determines academic policy. "We would probably modify the software as opposed to making very significant changes in academic policy -- the reason being that changing academic policy can be a very difficult and lengthy process of working with the Academic Senate," Mr. Quillian says. "But those kinds of accommodations, to the best of my knowledge, have not been necessary with the student systems," at least so far. Indiana University's faculty council recently voted to cancel its four-years-and-out graduation policy because it would have cost too much to customize the university's new PeopleSoft student systems to accommodate the policy. PeopleSoft officials want to help Cal State's universities "run themselves like a modern business" while allowing each one to maintain its own identity, says Jim McGlothlin, the company's Western regional vice president. "The economic situation facing many states is certainly contributing to debates between faculty and administrators," adds Kimberley Williams, a PeopleSoft director. But she says that "standardizing business processes and achieving economies of scale will help institutions weather economic challenges." Such combined technology projects are not for everybody. In 1997, the State University of New York considered developing common management systems for its 64 campuses. But it dropped the idea as "not a good fit for SUNY," says Laurence Sombke, a university spokesman. But the University System of Georgia, not as large as SUNY, has used PeopleSoft's administrative software to develop common financial and human-resources systems. All institutions within the system, except the University of Georgia, run the same baseline code on servers managed by the system office, says Randall A. Thursby, vice chancellor for information and instructional technology. For its student systems, all but two of Georgia's 34 public colleges run a common-baseline version of SCT's Banner software on their campus servers, where each institution can modify it. But that is about to change, Mr. Thursby says: "We are working on a new Banner model that will reduce the ability of individual campuses to modify the baseline product." Cal State's project leaders say a similar constraint will help their universities avoid mistakes of the past. Typically, policies requiring software modifications were made without regard for what it would cost a constituent institution over the years to maintain those changes. As a result, some institutions in the Cal State system are running administrative software that may be as much as three generations behind current commercial releases because those institutions cannot afford to upgrade their software, says A. Michael Berman, vice president for instructional and information technology at Cal State's Polytechnic University at Pomona. The problem is not that new software itself is too expensive. Rather, it is that the institutions cannot afford to pay programmers to recode all of the customized functions that technicians added to the old code. "Because software is infinitely flexible, it's assumed that it can be infinitely flexible at no cost," says Mr. Berman, who is incoming chairman of Cal State's organization of chief information officers. Unrealistic Goals? Some observers say that streamlining and standardizing the policies for hiring, admissions, and transfers at 23 universities are unrealistic goals. Robert H. Daniels, a professor of accounting at San Francisco State University, which is part of the Cal State system, says "diseconomies of scale" arise in developing standard policies and software programs for the whole system because of the level of coordination -- with countless meetings -- required to make it work. But officials in the chancellor's office say, to the contrary, that economies of scale have produced savings for each of the universities in the system. "The economies of scale are in licensing, experience, training, knowing what works and doesn't work, discipline, planning, and executing," says Chancellor Reed. Chico's share of the overall cost, for example, works out to about $2.6-million a year for seven years, or about 2 percent of the university's total budget of $125-million a year, says Mr. Esteban. Chico allocates about 5 percent of its annual budget for information-technology expenses, which is typical of universities in general. The most recent spending figures released by the chancellor's office are from June 2002, which show that $173.5-million has been spent on the project so far. The central administration has spent $87.9-million, and the campuses $85.6-million. Cal State paid about $30-million to PeopleSoft to license its financial, human-resources, and student-administration software. The rest of the $400-million is the estimated cost, spread over seven or eight years, of hiring temporary employees to fill in for regular employees working on the PeopleSoft project, of software training, and of consultants with knowledge of how to customize the new software. The hourly rates of such consultants are $80 to $300. Mr. Reed and other proponents argue that the average annual cost of the PeopleSoft project -- about $50-million -- is manageable without hurting enrollment and faculty hiring on the 23 campuses. "That's what good presidents are all about -- managing resources," he says. One thing seems certain: Cal State will have to live with growing pains from its new technology. "Here the universities predated the system, and there's an inevitable tension between the center and the periphery," says Mr. Daniels, the San Francisco accounting professor. "It's 23 universities and an administration that would like to make it a system." Less certain is the impact of California's budget crunch -- and the pending state audit. The auditor's office, which was to issue its report in December 2002, now expects to release it next month. Meanwhile, the budget deficit, triggered by a steep decline in capital-gains revenues, is expected to reach $35-billion by the next budget year. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, has proposed cuts of nearly $10-billion in education, health care, and transportation spending. Many of Cal State's campuses are prepared to stay on schedule for completing the systems project, says Mr. Quillian, chairman of the Common Management Systems executive committee. It all depends "on how much and how deep the budgets will be cut," Mr. Quillian says. The Cal State universities that have not yet installed the new administrative systems by the next budget year may have to wait "until we see what's going to happen with the economy," says Mr. Reed. "Everything's going to be on the table." CAL STATE'S LONG ROAD TO ADMINISTRATIVE COMPUTING March 1996 California State University presidents approve a technology strategy, based on their acquiring compatible administrative-computing systems. May-November 1997 Cal State solicits bids for administrative software to handle financial accounting, personnel records, and student financial and academic information. Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SCT respond. September 1998 Cal State signs a contract for about $30-million to license software from PeopleSoft. July 1999 Cal State presidents unanimously pledge support for common management systems to replace incompatible, campus-based administrative-computing systems. February 2001 Cal State's Fresno, Sonoma, and California Maritime Academy campuses volunteer to be pilot sites for PeopleSoft's student-administration software, the most complex portion of the company's integrated administrative software for higher education. In exchange, the system chancellor's office agrees to pay 50 percent of the consulting costs incurred by the three campuses. March 2001 Cal State signs a five-year, $60.1-million contract with Unisys for consolidated data-center services through the company's Salt Lake City site. July 2001 Eleven of the 23 Cal State campuses begin using PeopleSoft's financial and human-resources software. February 2002 The Fresno, Sonoma, and California Maritime Academy campuses begin handling admissions using PeopleSoft's student-administration software. April 2002 The Joint Legislative Audit Committee of the California Legislature asks for an audit of the project, after Cal State employee unions complain to lawmakers about overspending. September 2002 The Fresno, Sonoma, and California Maritime Academy campuses begin using the full range of PeopleSoft's student-administration software. Fresno is late with financial-aid payments; Sonoma is early. December 2002 A total of 15 out of 23 campuses are using PeopleSoft's human-resources software, 14 are using the financial-accounting software, and 5 are using the student-information systems. February 2003 California's state auditor is expected to release a report on Cal State's PeopleSoft project. September 2006 The remaining campuses are expected to have started using the full complement of administrative software.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 49, Issue 19, Page A27
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education