Anyone else notice that some schools with really good reputations can have really heinously bad websites or portals? Do they not realize that their online presence, correctly or not, reflects on the quality of their programs, particularly their CS programs? DS is at Virginia Tech. Their portal is HORRIBLE. Multiple different logins for different functions. Difficult to navigate/figure out how to do basic things (e.g., like add $ to a dining account) or find basic information. In the 3 years he’s been there, it has gotten better, but wow, it was so bad at first it was really quite embarrassing to me as an alum, and is a pretty consistent topic of questions on the VT parents’ facebook page.
Now DD is going through the process, and experiencing similar issues with other schools. Like, UMD keeps emailing her about submitting her preferences for the Honors College, which she has already done. How hard is it to filter out the emails that have submitted responses and NOT send another email? Sends the student into panic mode because they think something is wrong when it isn’t. Likewise, getting an email that says to click this link and do this that or the other thing, and then finding that the link doesn’t work… Or being asked to submit a form online and getting an error because you included dashes in the phone # it requested. Lazy, sloppy programming … read it in as a string, parse for dashes and spaces, and proceed. I’m not a CS major and even I can do that… None of these things are “deal breakers” or horrible on their own, but consistently encountering them every time you interact with a school online does wear away at your impression of the school. And even if the CS department isn’t involved at all in the website maintenance, they should be aware that people still make the association … so it would be to their benefit to make sure their website is well beta tested and user friendly…
So what other “good” schools have really klunky online interfaces?
I think they are all pretty bad. DD1’s school had a major change last year - I still can’t figure it out and I was doing pretty well before the change. DD2’s school’s has always been awful and it’s not improved over the years. They had a sports team site that I thought was pretty good but the ‘upgrade’ ruined it all. Now I have to go to the main page and pick a sport, and if I want to look up something else, back to main page and start again. they also require she change her password every three months, and since I only need to get into her billing page ever FOUR months, I’m always locked out and she has to let me back in.
Ditto for the Barnard Admissions Portal. And they don’t even utilize IDOC and required all tax documents and Admissions documents be copied and sent snail mail?!? Get with technology, people!
Just a note to anyone waiting to hear from Bates, last year they sent a snail mail letter to all applicants with a login code to check the portal when the decisions came out. There was no email with this information, just the paper mail. If your letter got lost with all the other college promotional garbage, you would not be able to find out the decision. So go and find that letter now or request a new one before decisions come out, or you will have to wait and call and then wait again. It’s a weird system unlike most every other.
At the university where I used to work in IT, our CS academic department had nothing to do with running IT at the university. The CS department’s job was instruction, not the full-time job of IT at a university.
Most universities use purchased software such as Banner from Ellucian to run the university. While the software is costly, there is savings because they don’t need tons of IT staff to write custom applications, which have to be maintained and updated frequently. Banner includes a self-service portal which is customizable but somewhat limited.
People on CC frequently complain about college costs. IT staff/support is a cost. Most schools choose to cut costs where they can by not paying for lots of IT staff to write custom applications.
People want every school–and every function of every school–to work like a BMW but they don’t want to pay BMW prices. It takes a lot of administrators to keep the website working smoothly, update the content with new! and exciting! stories about the school! to compete with, well, its peer competitors. And Photos!
People want their desired school to instantaneously process reimbursements, have instant study abroad programs and smiling no-wait people to manage students’ every whims about dorms, athletic facilities, entertainment; Great snack bars and a billion different diets to cater to; 24-hour therapy people/dogs/access for the entire student body at any one time; research programs with state of the art equipment in arcane topics; trained and smiling tour staff . . . etc.
And I’ve even seen parents complain about the parking issues on campuses. (!!)
On some threads parents were also complaining and/or praising gardening and lawns.
That all takes money.
Lo and behold! One of the big factors driving up tuition are Administrative Costs.
And parents want the schools to then cough up tuition breaks for their children.
Some schools have net price calculators that ask for so little information that it is unlikely that the result is accurate. Example would be the net price calculators that look like this one:
I’m a student and I’ll complain about parking on campus until the cows come home. Why? Because there’s only about 8 handicapped parking spots on central campus. That’s ridiculous.
Anyway, I don’t personally want a fancy website- I just want one that I can access at 5 AM because sometimes that’s when I’m up and working. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Now that all 3 kids are in school, this is the kind of stuff I notice a lot. Admissions portals vary a lot, but they really don’t matter over the 4-year haul.
Some of the things I notice now: How easy is the financial reporting to understand, how easy is it for me to make payments and track them. What year are 1098-T numbers taken from (one of our schools always matches ours school term calcs, one is strictly by calendar year ‘billed’, and the other didn’t even report!), consistency of layout on website, how easy is it for me to find the email address of financial aid dept
And one last comment … Moodle … makes me glad I went to school in the dark ages! (I know it’s for the students’ use, and not the parents … thankfully … but good grief!)
I’m not talking about creating flashy marketing websites and keeping them up to date with the latest and greatest information to allow the school to attract new applicants. I’m talking about having the portals by which people interact with the school in conducting official business (e.g., applying to the school, paying bills, signing up for events, etc.) function correctly and not routinely generate errors and confusion.
Systems that handle payments must pay attention to Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements. Most schools use a third party systems for these transactions due to PCI compliance. TouchNet, TMS, Sallie Mae and Nelnet are popular third-party systems. These can be integrated into the campus portal, but since it’s a different system, it usually requires different log-in information. In addition, authorized payers (like parents) will also need a way to log-in to the system - they can’t get in thru the campus portal like a student does.
Well my son managed the admissions website for his entire 4 years at a certain Ivy. I certainly hope things worked! I imagine many schools use a student…
^ Loving the Rutgers physics! That’s some 1998 charm. Seriously though, there’s no excuse for mistakes or broken sites, but I do know of a few colleges where they don’t want to update their sites because they have “nothing to prove”. It’s the web equivalent of a Harvard professor who wears unironed pants and scruffy shoes.
