The University of Cambridge has chosen PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Solutions as the platform for its student information system (CamSIS) to provide a more efficient service to its staff and students.
The University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world and one of the largest in the UK. It has a worldwide reputation for outstanding academic achievement in teaching and research. The university comprises over 150 departments in the faculties and schools and has just under 30 000 graduate and undergraduate students currently registered in its 31 colleges.
Higher education has become highly competitive, both in the UK and internationally, as institutions work to attract the world`s best students for both undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
The University of Cambridge holds a leading position and in order to preserve this leadership, it needs to ensure that it has administrative systems for staff and student support that are of a similar standard.
The university chose PeopleSoft as the basis for an integrated, real-time system covering the administrative progression of students through all stages of their relationship with the university. The aim is to provide a seamless, integrated approach to all administrative processes to meet the requirements of the university, colleges, academic departments, staff and students.
Cambridge maintains several systems, each with different formats of data and records - some still paper-based. CamSIS will be capable of maintaining appropriate information regarding students, including admissions, course registrations, progress and financial aid, in one place.
This will offer the opportunity to interact with the college systems, potentially providing a single, realtime view of students and their university lifecycle. This will enable administrative processes to become more efficient and speed up responses to student requests for information.
"Many of our student administration processes are very much paper-based and the systems we currently have do not integrate very well with each other. These issues combined mean we are unable to service requests for information from staff and students efficiently," says a university spokesman. "CamSIS will provide facilities for staff and students to access and update the information they need, with suitable levels of security and with the ability to do it from a Web browser whenever it is convenient to them. This is part of our strategy to make the administrative activities of the university very much more a service to the academic community."
Crosbie Burns, VP and MD, PeopleSoft UK and Ireland, adds: "Higher education is becoming aligned with to the business world and institutions have begun to adopt business practices. They are seeking the same functionality, such as real-time availability of information and return on investment opportunities, in an attempt to make their offering seem more attractive to prospective students.
CamSIS will provide the university of Cambridge with administration and management best practices taken from PeopleSoft`s experience in business and will enable the university to meet its objective of providing a single, integrated student information system.
"We have translated our experience from the US into a model relevant to the UK market. This is the first project of its kind for PeopleSoft in the UK, firmly establishing Cambridge`s technological and thought leadership."
The university is required to provide statutory returns and reporting to external higher education bodies such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and to exchange electronic data with the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). CamSIS will provide Cambridge with the ability to deliver these requirements more efficiently and provide a more accurate representation of university data.
The Internet-based architecture of PeopleSoft Learning Solutions means CamSIS will be accessible to staff and students from any computer on the university`s network, via an Internet portal, and does not require physical deployment of software clients on computers across each of the university`s sites.
The university conducted a thorough evaluation of various vendors over a two-year period. PeopleSoft Learning Solutions was chosen as the only vendor capable of meeting the university`s criteria, predominantly Web browser client, rich functionality, strict security set-up, customisation ability and integration capabilities.
The modules which Cambridge University is implementing for CamSIS include Enterprise Portal, Community Access, Community Directory, Learner Services, Learning Management and Student Administration.
"The success of such sites as Cambridge are a clear pointer to where PeopleSoft will be focusing its attention in the South African market," says Mike Evans, MD of PeopleSoft South Africa. "We have already made inroads in the tertiary education market, and we expect to be the dominant company in this space a few years from now."
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