Registration
Continued from Page 1
something UNL would get. A new
student information system, includ
ing admissions, recruiting and fi
nancial aid data and conveniences
such as touch-tone registration, was
included in a $970,000 package the
NU Board of Regents tabled at its
December meeting.
But James Griesen, UNL vice
chancellor for student affairs, said
other plans, such as increasing fac
ulty salaries, got higher priority
from the regents than the SIS
proposal. And after Gov. Ben
Nelson announced his frugal budget
plans for NU, Griesen said he didn’i
expect a new student information
system soon.
Still, he said, changes will have
to be made eventually, because the
student records system is “obsolete,
non-integrated ... and brittle.”
“If anyone touches it, the whole
system could collapse,” Griesen
said.
Pans of the current system, in
cluding the registration program,
have been used since the ’60s.
Griesen said it doesn’t meet
administrators' needs anymore.
UNL programs created since the
late ’70s, such as the College of
Journalism and the nursing pro
gram, aren’t recognized in the
databases. Double majors, “some
thing that’s really in vogue right
now,” according to Griesen, cannot
be denoted on student files.
That means administrators have
to take extra time to look up the
data they need. If they mail infor
mation to all students with a certain
major, for example, they might miss
some who arc double majors. When
the university adds another college,
such as the proposed College of
Fine and Performing Arts, it causes
further headaches for computer
programmers, Griesen said.
To students, perhaps no part of
the system is more cumbersome
than registration, with its course
request forms, worksheets, drop/add
sessions and lines.
Most UNL students try to get a
jump on the crowd by going
through preregistration. But over
the last six years, the percentage of
students who received complete
schedules, containing the number of
hours requested, with or without
alternate courses, has declined
steadily.
ror second semester tvso, u.s
percent of the 17,993 students who
went through preregistration re
ceived full schedules. By this
spring, that percentage had dropped
to 66.7 percent of 18,571 students.
Pfeifer said that between 50 anu
55 percent of students gel full
schedules with no alternate sections
or courses during preregistration.
Many students fail to get full
schedules because of their own
mistakes. About 15 percent mark
the course request forms with
incorrect call numbers, Pfeifer said.
When a freshman math major
accidentally requests a graduate
level history course, the computer
notes the mistake and the student’s
schedule is printed out incomplete.
That student then must go through
drop/add to fill out the schedule.
If UNL had touch-tone registra
tion, it wouldn’t have to keep such
statistics. Students could correct the
errors with phone calls instead of
going through drop/add.
Between 120 and 150 universi
ties nationwide have touch-lone
systems, according to Jan Loomis,
director of marketing for Rochester,
N.Y.-based Information Associates,
one of the companies that manufac
tures them.
UNL lags behind, Gricsen said,
because of a lack of financing and a
decision that “didn’t come to frui
tion.”
In the mid-’70s, the Lincoln
campus was given the task of
developing a university wide
information system for the three NU
branches: UNL, the University of
Nebraska at Omaha and the
University of Nebraska Medical
Center.
Because there were no proven
packaged systems available at that
time, officials decided to make theit
own, Griesen said.
They might have bitten off more
than they could chew.
University of Nebraska-Lincoin
Course request forms are fed into the computer.
Several weeks later, students receive schedules
in the mail.
University of Colorado,
Iowa State University
Students register by calling from a touch-tone
telephone. When they hang up, they have
confirmed schedules.
University of Missouri,
University of Oklahoma,
University of Kansas,
Oklahoma State University,
and Kansas State University
Students register during individual sessions at
computer terminals. When they leave, they
have confirmed schedules.
Source: Big Eight registration officials
Ami* DeFraln/Daliy Nabraskan
UNL Preregistration Trends A ^at students who premiered and
5 received complete schedules
Students Preregistering Percent of complete schedules
17,933 17,704 13-571 ?3 2
72.3
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Brian Shallllo/Oally Nabraakan
When programmers started
i working on the new system, Griescn
said, they found out it was a
“gargantuan task.” The program fell
behind schedule in the late ’70s and
: early ’80s.
“It was eating up more and more
of our computer resources,” he said.
By the early ’80s, UNO and
UNMC officials could wail no
longer for the programmers in
Lincoln to create a universitywide
system.
NU leaders decided that all three
campuses should buy their own
packages from Information Associ
ates. UNO and UNMC bought the
software. UNL did not.
“Lincoln had a half system, a
! commitment and no money,”
Griescn said.
Looking back, he said, the deci
sion to fix a system from scratch
was a mistake. Even if more time
and money had been invested, the
I current system would be obsolete
because technology has changed so
much since the mid-’70s, he said.
Plans have changed, too. In
I January 1989, a UNL Student
Information System Task Force,
consisting of administrators and
professors, investigated the options
and costs of a system and issued
recommendations in a report
released in April 1990.
Last summer, the NU Informa
tion Systems Management Council,
which includes representatives of
the three NU campuses and Kear
ney State College, decided that
those institutions should move
toward putting student information
into an IBM database using the
university’s mainframe computer.
The council recommended that
the campuses work on separate
proposals to develop their parts of
the iniegratcd system. The $970,(XX)
request that the regents tabled
would have gone toward UNL’s
portion.
UNL’s timetable called for uni
versity officials to lobby the Ne
braska Legislature for funding
during the current session and, with
approval, begin installation in
August, with parts of the new
system running by July 1992.
The plan would have revamped
all UNL student records to place
them on one database. According to
! the SIS task force report, it would
i have contained all “core” student
information: registration, records,
admissions, financial aid, student
accounts and recruiting.
“The current amalgamation of
systems and programs handles
many of these operational proc
esses, although not in a single
integrated system,” the report said.
Currently, UNL stores most stu
dent records on three different soft
ware packages, two of which are
obsolete, Gricsen said.
Each software system, called an
operating environment, simplifies
data storage and retrieval. But each
must be entered separately, with its
own codes. Data on every student
arc stored in all three, but when
information is updated in one
database, it isn’t automatically
changed in the others.
Donna Liss, coordinator of infor
mation management for the UNL
Computing Resource Center, said
sorting through the three databases
on the IBM mainframe plus others
on a Digital Equipment Corporation
computer and on personal comput
ers is almost impossible.
“1 don’t think there’s anyone on
this campus who could do that,” she
said. “You’d be better off going
through folders.”
Gricscn said training new per
sonnel to retrieve student informa
tion can “drive them out of their
minds quickly.”
But “our greatest problem is our
inability to serve students the way
we should,” he said.
With some information systems,
Liss said, students can use tele
phones not only for registration, but
also to find out how much financial
aid they will receive, to get their
grades and to check their balances
at the Bursar’s office. Degree audit
systems let students monitor their
progress toward degrees. They also
show at a glance what requirements
students would lack if they were to
change majors and virtually
eliminate the need for senior
checks, Liss said.
A new registration system, she
said, would ensure that students had
filled prerequisites for the courses
they requested. She said in the past,
UNL colleges have done that by
hand.
Gricscn said another problem
with the current system is the cost
of maintaining the two obsolete
software packages.
UNL spends $120,000 a year to
lease the packages, Gricscn said. If
the university upgrades its IBM
mainframe computer, the cost of
leasing the packages will go up to
between $150,000 and $200,000, he
said.
The NU biennial budget request
for 1991-93 calls for such an
upgrade, but budget proposals by
Gov. Ben Nelson and the Nebraska
Legislature’s Appropriations
Committee eliminate the plan.
Until a new information system
is installed, Griesen said, UNL will
have to lease both obsolete pack
ages.
“We are wasting money because
we have no way to escape,” he said.
The computers also take so long
to convert between the old and new
systems that it would amount to
$200,000 worth of computer time if
it were billed out, Griesen said. In
addition, UNL is maintaining
scanners for course request forms
1 used during registration that it
would not need, he said.
Not counting the computer time,
Griesen estimated UNL spends
about $200,000 a year that would
be unnecessary with a new SIS. But
he cautioned that UNL would not
save “oodles of money” with a new
student information system.
“You never save money when
you upgrade systems,” he said.
The $970,000 was proposed as a
one-time expenditure. UNL still
would have to lay out money every
year for maintenance and to work
the bugs out of the system. And in
the 1 1/2 years Griesen estimated it
would take to gel a new SIS
running, UNL would have to pay
for both systems.
Other than the extra money lor
software, the current registration
system requires mostly paper.
Tony Schkadc, assistant director
of registration and records, said
schedules of classes cost 17 cents
each, course request forms cost 3
cents a piece and worksheets, a
nickel each, totalling about a
quarter per student.
One of the costs of a touch-tone
system is for additional phone lines.
UNL would need between 32 and
64, Schkadc said.
At first, touch-tone registration
at Iowa Suite caused some problems
with the telephone system. So many
calls came in that lines in the entire
city of Ames were tied up.
Now Iowa State has specific
phone lines for registration. And the
university assigns each student a
time to begin calling. But some
students still have a hard time
getting through to the computer.
“You have to call about eight
million times,” Eslingcr said, before
the busy signal slops.
Even after they gel through for
the first lime, many students call
back again and again.
In fall 1987, before the move to
touch tone, Iowa State’s computer
logged about 198,000 computer ac
tions — adds, drops and schedule
changes — during the entire enroll
ment process. Under the new
system, students made 238,000 such
actions — about 10 per student —
to register for the fall 1990 semes
ter.
But it (registration) is lots eas
ier,” said Kathy Jones, IowaState
associate registrar. “There’s no
paper trail.”
In the fall of 1987, under the old
system, 2,582 students went through
drop/add at Iowa State. This fall,
with touch-tone registration, that
; number dropped to 1,556; another
369 used the phone for drops.
Jones said the decrease shows
that students arc more satisfied with
the classes they get and that they
can handle scheduling problems
before classes begin.
At Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah, where the first touch
tonc system in the country was in
stalled in 1984, student response
was overwhelmingly positive.
Wayne Childs, BYU registrar,
said that in a survey, 99 percent of
BYU’s 27,(XX) students said touch
tone registration was easy to
j understand. About 83 percent said
they had had no problems register
ing. Almost 70 percent gave the
system a “very positive” evaluation,
while 28 percent rated it “moder
ately positive.”
Drops and adds decreased by 40
! percent after the touch-tone system
I was installed, Childs said.
“Professors were jumping up and
down and saying ‘hurrah,’” Childs
said. “The first week of school is
now like the third week.”
Those advantages UNL once
again will do wilhout. Instead of
punching telephone buttons like
Eslingcr at Iowa State, 18,000
students will try to beat the rush by
turning in preregistration packets
beginning Monday.
About half of them will get the
courses they want, when they want.
Another couple thousand will get
alternate courses or sections. Others
will try their luck at drop/add or
general registration.