Provosts and vice presidents of seven of eighth universities in the Big Ten Conference that use PeopleSoft software have sent a joint letter to the company to complain that the "performance of the systems, in terms of responsiveness, is simply unacceptable."

The three-page letter outlines the institutions' problems with the software and suggests solutions. It also emphasizes the colleges' commitment to the product.

Problems described in the letter include issues of software quality as well as of performance. The letter focuses on the amount of time PeopleSoft programs require to handle large "batch" tasks, such as tuition calculations--which, for some institutions, took six days. "There are too many bugs and patches," the letter continues. "Packaging new releases and fixes are not well tested and poorly deployed."

Spokesmen at PeopleSoft, which is based in Pleasanton, Calif., say that it is arranging to meet with signatories to discuss their concerns.

The November 30 letter capped a difficult autumn for the company, which has been battered by complaints about its student administration systems from both large and small institutions. (The Chronicle, September 24, 1999. The company's chief executive officer, David A. Duffield, offered a public apology for those and other problems at an August conference attended by thousands of PeopleSoft users in higher education and other fields.

A JOINT DECISION

The letter was signed by the provosts of Northwestern University, Ohio State University, and the Universities of Iowa, Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Minnesota-Twin Cities, as well as vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the vice president for information technology at Indiana University in Bloomington.

The institutions decided together to purchase the software in July, 1997. Now their administrators say they are facing the problems together--and for the first time, have begun creating "multi-institution working groups" to do so.

Many of the problems stem from the sheer size of the universities which employ 35,000 faculty members and enroll over half a million students. As a result of the institutions' size, "problems with PeopleSoft escalate quickly and dramatically," notes the letter.

Rebecca R. Dixon, associate provost for university enrollment at Northwestern, says that "PeopleSoft was the biggest software installation that Northwestern has ever engaged in.

"It has cut across all aspects of the student-administration services, prospective-student administration, financial aid, records and registration, and billing," she says. "We're working for the first time with an integrated system." The financial aid module of the program is particularly ill-equipped to deal with the customized services that Northwestern provides, she says.

Registration for courses, which Northwestern hoped could be handled over the Web, instead required small groups of students to go to specific locations to enter their class choices, says Ms. Dixon, because the Web component of the software could not handle large numbers of users. Northwestern, which spent roughly $10 million on PeopleSoft, is one of the software maker's smallest clients in the Big Ten, with approximately 10,000 students, says Ms. Dixon. She adds that apart from the problem with the Web, the registration software was "excellent."

"IT'S FRUSTRATING"

Some university officials are surprised that PeopleSoft did not seem to understand their computing needs. Says Paul N. Courant, associate vice provost at Michigan: "I do not think there was good mutual understanding between the universities and PeopleSoft about what was going to be required for the software to work smoothly."

"To a certain extent, it's frustrating to educate them," he says. Universities are different from large commercial enterprises, he notes: They are far less centralized and may have far-flung campuses whose research and graduate programs are distinct from undergraduate schools.

He adds that "both the universities and PeopleSoft are working hard to make it work."

Steve Swasey, who is PeopleSoft's public-relations director, acknowledges that "a few of the implementations have not been as successful as planned. But," he adds, "higher education is a real priority for this company."

[The original letter sent to PeopleSoft by the Big 10 schools is at http://www1.umn.edu/enterprise/docs/emails/1213letter.htm]