NU, state colleges merge online

LINCOLN — With students heading back to college, Gov. Dave Heineman and state higher education officials on Wednesday highlighted the success of a new student information system.

The system serves the University of Nebraska's four campuses and the three colleges within the Nebraska State College System.

It went online last year to handle such functions as class enrollment, registration, financial aid, student accounts and more.

Heineman praised the new system as an outstanding example of how government can save money and be more efficient.

It began as two separate proposals in 2007, one from the university and one from the state colleges, to replace old and outdated systems. Undertaking both proposals would have cost about $42 million.

But collaborating on a single system brought the cost down to about $20 million.

NU President J.B. Milliken said the savings should continue to add up. The two higher education institutions can share the costs of maintenance, licenses and upgrades.

He estimated the savings on annual maintenance alone at $1.8 million.

Creating a system to serve the needs of seven different campuses was a challenge, said Stan Carpenter, the state college system chancellor. Typically, such major computer systems are built for individual campuses.

Building the Nebraska system took two years of work by teams of financial, business and technical staff from the participating institutions and the state Office of the Chief Information Officer.

From a user's perspective, the system has been easy to manage, said Lane Carr, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln senior from Ainsworth.

He said students did not feel any pain during the transition from the old to the new system.

Carpenter said the new system will provide more data to help officials work on keeping more students in school and getting more students graduated.

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