Massey software issues a ‘big bang’
More students had to seek financial help to head off hardship because of enrolment delays at Massey University, according to a student leader.
Massey University Students’ Association had a ‘‘significant increase’’ in requests for financial help from students in difficult circumstances this year, the association president Ben Schmidt said.
‘‘We strongly believe that would be linked to the run-on from their student loan [information] being delayed.’’
The number of enrolments is also down.
The enrolment software shambles at Massey University has led to comparisons with the Novopay software debacle that caused many teachers to be paid incorrect amounts.
Last year, a new online enrolment system was introduced at Massey, but by February, with the start of semester one looming, scores of students were reporting enrolment applications made months in advance were still unprocessed.
The number of enrolments has dropped by about 3.5 per cent for Kiwi students and 1.6 per cent overall, compared with this time last year, Massey University assistant vice-chancellor Stuart Morriss said last week. But international student enrolments were up 6 per cent.
It was difficult to know how much the enrolment problems had influenced this, communications director James Gardiner said.
The Manawatu¯ Standard has seen dozens of complaints after the start of semester where enrolments were still unprocessed or students did not have access to course material. Massey confirmed 608 enrolments were still pending on the first day of semester.
Schmidt said applications for help were likely only a small proportion of actual hardship suffered.
‘‘The stress [students] they go through is huge.’’
It was widely believed the issues were inflated by a ‘‘big bang’’ launch of the system, Schmidt said.
‘‘It means the whole new system is introduced at once, rather than running the new alongside the old for a bit, or having a certain amount of students in the old and the new systems.
‘‘We’re hopeful that things will have improved slightly, but we’ve really got to wait and see.’’
IT Professionals NZ chief executive Paul Matthews said introducing a new software system in a bigbang fashion was not good industry practice where large numbers of people could be affected at once.
IT Professionals NZ chief executive Paul Matthews said introducing a new software system in a big-bang fashion was not good industry practice where large numbers of people could be affected at once – unless there were specific reasons for it.
‘‘It’s certainly not the preferred option. The nature of software is you expect there’s going to be some initial teething problems.
‘‘With Novopay, one of the reasons that was such a major problem was because they rolled it out to the country in one go. If they’d rolled it out to a small number of users, they could have ironed out the issues before it snowballed.’’
Schmidt said students and staff deserved accountability and openness about the problems.
Massey has previously apologised for the enrolment problems.
‘‘There was a combination of technical issues that needed ironing out ... and the fact students and staff had to learn to work with a new system,’’ Gardiner said.
The university had chosen not to run the old and new systems at the same time because of that resulting in ‘‘a poorer experience for students and staff’’.