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Tuesday, November 28,1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Efforts to use computers to streamline the enrollment system at the University of Kansas have resulted in nothing more than an
Enrollment Embarrassment
Distributed enrollment timeline:
July 1992
Rich Morrell, University registrar, proposes a distributed enrollment system to be patterned after one used by the University of Iowa. The proposal requests $65,150 be allocated to hire two programmers for one year and one shortterm programmer. October 1993 is identified as a target date for implementation.
November 1993
A committee of administrators and staff begins frequent meetings to assess and mold the new system Meetings continue through early 1995.
September 23, 1994
An article in the University Daily Kansan announces the system will be ready for student use by Spring 1995.
December 19, 1994
Distributed enrollment planners meet to discuss problems with Huron.
December 22, 1994
Continued from Page 1A
promised in 1994, distributed enrollment was going to make students' lives a little bit easier.
"That's the thing that bothers me," said Richard Morrell, University registrar. "We were going to improve this little slice of life for students, and we couldn't deliver."
The postponement of a distributed enrollment system means that students still have to fill out add/drop forms such as this one and wait in long lines.
Originally, distributed enrollment was to be ready in Spring 1959. About 175 computer terminals across campus would have provided enrollment sites in several University buildings. No appointment times would have been necessary.
What happened to Todd Raccuglia, Olathe senior, this fall would not have happened with distributed enrollment.
Raccuglia's enrollment time was early in the morning on the second day of enrollment — a good time, he thought. But Raccuglia missed his appointment by five minutes.
"I had to reschedule for Wednesday, and I only got three of the five classes I wanted," she said. "I guess there's no better way to do it, but it seems like kind of a hassle."
Plans for a new enrollment system began in 1992. Funds totaling $65,150 were allocated for salaries for two computer programmers for one year and one programmer for three months.
But after programmers had spent more than a year building the system they made a painful discovery. The University's 1970s enrollment technology would not meld with the state-of-the-art programming language the programmers were working with. Some say the revelation should not have been so startling.
"I'm surprised they got that far down the road before they realized there was a problem," said William Fierke, registrar at the University of Illinois, where a distributed enrollment program started this fall.
Dick Mann, KU director of administration, said administrators knew from the start that the method they were using might not work.
Morrell helped the University of Northern Colorado implement a telephone system as far back as 1988, when he was assistant registrar there.
He proposed the idea at KU in 1990, not long after taking the job of University registrar.
Unders the current system students must go to the enrollment center at an appointed time in Strong Hall, where an employee enrolls them. For this fall, 25,036 KU students enrolled on the center's 10 terminals. Usually, the center is open 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:30 p.m. — times when students are likely to have classes. That's an outdated way of processing people.
"There was a calculated risk that it wouldn't work, and it didn't," Mann said. "We took a gamble."
Pamela Keller, computer programmer for the University, defended the old mainframe system. She said the system, although antimated, was still good.
KU lost that gamble.
Touch-fone no ao
Most Big Eight schools have telephone enrollment, which allows students to enroll by touch-tone phone. And most of them allow advisers to enroll students in their offices.
dean's stamps remain a part of the enrollment process for students in most of KU's professional schools.
At the time, though, he was told the technology was too expensive. Also, students who needed dean's stamps or special permission for classes could not use a touch-tone system.
Then as now, the University's enrollment system ran on a dinosaur on an IBM-compatible mainframe computer purchased in 1977 from the Dutch company Amdahl. It was programmed in a language called COBOL. The KU operating system often is referred to as "homegrown" because it was written by University programmers.
"Over the years, we haven't requested the money to upgrade," Morrell said. "It was old in 1984, and it should have been updated. Then it should have been updated again in 1990."
Ancient hardware
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To replace the entire system would have taken about four years and would have cost millions. But that is what distributed enrollment developers now say they would have done, had they known they would hit a dead end.
frame handles the University's student records, financial aid, the library system and, until recently, the payroll.
The spending already has begun with a new system for the University's payroll. The University, K-State and the state of Kansas pooled funds to purchase a Unix operating system specifically for running payroll.
"If we'd had a million dollars, we would have gone out and bought a system. It is no longer feasible to write our own," Mann said. "Eventually, we will end up spending that."
David Gardner, KU director of information systems, explained that computer technology is moving away from mainframe systems. Unix allows information to be processed at the personal computer where data is entered. With a mainframe system like the one in use at the University, so-called "dumb" terminals are linked to a central computer, which does most of the work.
Warmed-over software
In the end, KU's failure to implement a modern enrollment system was the result of trying to take the cheap way out.
To save money, administrators and computer programmers decided to work with the mainframe system.
In order to salvage the old COBOL database, they decided to use an operating system and programming language made by Amdahl called Huron. The University had purchased Huron several years before. Gardner said Huron was to be used in writing a new payroll program. But when the University joined the state and K-State in purchasing the Unix operating system, the University was stuck with a $300,000 operating system it did not need.
When administrators and computer center staff started talking about distributed enrollment, writing a new system in Huron seemed the most economical option because the University already had it, Gardner said.
"The idea was that, with some minor modifications, we could open the enrollment center up and let people enroll themselves," he said. They soon found out there was more to it than that.
Huron was meant to interface the old technology with the new database.
"It could communicate. It just couldn't handle the volume," she said. "The response time was just too slow."
And it worked just fine, Keller said, until a lot of the new system had been written. Then it crashed.
It was as if the University had purchased a brand new set of racing tires for a broken-down Ford Pinto.
And it wasn't only slow, it was unpredictable. Mann said.
That was puzzling, considering the fact that Amdahl representatives assured KU officials the system would work.
"Amdahl, the makers of the mainframe computer and Huron, told us this would work in our computer environment," Morrell said. "I think we've learned to be less trusting."
Pete Leithem, Amdahl sales representative, said there was no way to foresee that Huron would not be able to perform.
said. "It might run the right way in a test situation, but when you put it under a full stress load, it might not function."
He also stressed that Huron was not specifically designed to be a distributed enrollment program in the first place; it was only a programming language that could be used to create one.
Success elsewhere
KU's failed version of distributed enrollment was patterned after a system the University of Iowa implemented in 1989.
Iowa's system was homegrown, too.
Iowa's system was homegrown, too. Jerald Dallam, registrar at Iowa, said the transition from the old system, which was much like KU's current system, took about eight months.
"Our old site was open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. On the current system, most students enroll between 4 p.m. and midnight," Dallam said.
Iowa's programmers created software with the University's old IBM mainframe and a different programming language. It allowed students to register for classes, change their addresses and request transcripts at 28 sites around campus.
The University of Illinois patterned its distributed enrollment system after Iowa's, too. William Fierke, registrar at Illinois, said staff members worked for four years to have the system ready for enrollment for this fall. The cost, he said, was in the millions.
Flerke said the debut of the new system did not go off without a hitch. The system was designed to handle 200 transactions an hour. At the height of the enrollment frenzy, as many as 900 transactions were completed in an hour.
"Response time was within reason, but on three afternoons, the system crashed," Fierke said.
Nevertheless, he said, the system doesn't have any bugs that cannot be worked out. And the students seem to like it.
"It used to be they would swear at me. Now they swear by me," he said.
The lesson learned
Students' enrollment woes at the University of Kansas are not likely to get better any time soon. Morrell has said officials were looking at options such as a touch-tone phone system, which is more affordable now than it was five years ago, or expanded hours at the enrollment center.
"What we have now is a great understanding of what this community wants in an enrollment center," he said. "When we get to the point of selecting a system, we will know what works best."
And Morrell said efforts of the past three years had not been a total loss.
Mann said he knew very well the way students feel about the University's enrollment procedures. His daughter is a KU freshman.
"I hear about it from her," he said. "But we probably won't have distributed enrollment while she is a student here."
KU OFFICIALS WHAT THEY SAY
"There was a calculated risk that it wouldn't work, and it didn't. We took a gamble."
Director of administration
"We were going to improve this little slice of life for students,and we couldn't deliver. "
Richard Morrell University registrar
If there were a reason I would leave KU, it would be enrollment. The first week of school, I missed half the classes I was enrolled in because I was in the add/drop line.
Nicki Reno Westwood junior
...
"... I only got three of the five classes I wanted. I guess there's no better way to do it, but it seems like kind of a hassle."
Todd Raccuglia Olathe senior
Headline in the Kansan reads: "Distributed enrollment is delayed." The article cites lack of enough mainframe capacity to allow 150 students to use the system at once as the reason distributed enrollment will be delayed.