The University of Southeastern Philippines recently tapped Engr. Michael Angelo Z. Cagape and Dr. Tamara Cher R. Mercado, both Institute of Computing faculties in the same university to develop a new enrollment system which is planned to be use for this school year 2009-2010. I believe that not all students know the sudden change of enrollment system in the university especially those students who are enrolled in a non-technical college. Since, we are in the Institute of Computing and both assigned faculties has a handled subject in us, Engr. Cagape was supposed to be our Software Engineering 1 Instructor which was replaced by Mr. Jappeht Fortich and Dr. Mercado was supposed to be our System Analysis and Design Instructor which was replaced by Dr. Randy S. Gamboa when both faculties dropped their subjects to focus on developing the new system. The new enrollment system was started to be developed last semester, if I’m not mistaken late November of early December for it was the time when both faculties turn over their loads to other faculties but I’ve heard that the designs and documentations of the new enrollment system were already done which means that implementing the design, testing it and deploying it were the only task left.
At first I didn’t even have any idea why the university decided to change the enrollment system and took advantage of our in-house software developer. My first instinct tells me that they wanted a more customized system and get rid of the rent fee because I’ve heard that the university is just renting the system to a certain software developing company (sorry I don’t know the name) but then one thing bothers me, “Why are they so eager to change the system?”. Our faculties are given less than six months to finish everything and have the system ready for testing by summer 2009. The system should be given ample time to be developed to be ready for testing, I believe such a large system needs a year to develop and as expected lots of bugs were encountered.
I heard gossips ‘bout the new system and why the sudden change and based on what I heard the following reasons may be considered:
- MORE CUSTOMIZED SYSTEM. The university wants to have a more customized enrollment system, and I think building a new system especially for University of Southeastern Philippines would acquire that want. Packaged systems are created for the use of every client that they’ll have so customization issues really arises. Even though some customization can be done to packaged system it is really impossible for the packaged system to answer all the customization needs of their clients compared to in-house software. I guess for the past years that the university used the packaged enrollment system they’ve seen the need to have an in-house enrollment system and decided to have it done this school year.
- IF YOU HAVE IT, MAKE USE OF IT. I believe that we have programmers that are able to do the job and I also believe that the university also seen that. They make use of the resources that the university has and I believe it’s a smart move from the university.
- STATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES BUDGET CUT DOWN. I’ve read an article in the internet about the said budget cut down to 21 State Colleges and State Universities proposed by the senate (please read this article http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleid=427887). And I guess, the said proposal was approved because I’ve seen posts from the schools bulletin that says “WE condemn, SUCs budget cut” by the collegiate headlight. I also heard from the freshmen orientation held at the College of Education Audio Visual Room last June 17, 2009, Tuesday that the university is budgeting or something like that because we are not allowed to charge our cellular phones or laptops on the sockets that are on the corridor or plugs that are in the classrooms. Maybe the university already foreseen that the senate proposal would be approved that is why they decided to tap in-house resources to do the enrollment system. Having your own system and not paying for the rent fee would really help the university save more money. The university made a clever decision out from the State University and Colleges budget cut issue so I hope that the university will survive this school year without any financial problems.
Like what David Truog said “Large companies should stop trying to avoid in-house software development. Packaged apps don't work right out of the box, and relying on them alone gets you mediocrity at best. To break away from the pack, extend applications with custom code.”I guess the university is still on the right track. In-house software development has an advantage over packaged apps especially on customization issues.
Those reasons stated above are just based on my own analysis based on what I heard and read for the past months. Honestly speaking I don’t really know what the university purpose is or its reason for changing the system, as a student I don’t know everything so this posts is basically all based on my assessment about this issue. I am just hoping that for every decision that the university made may they always take into considerations their students welfare because after all we are their clients I guess we deserve to get out the best from them.
Lastly I would just like to say that the university should have considered adding new faculty members in the Institute of Computing during the development period, some faculties are over loaded because of the turn-over of loads from Dr. Mercado and Engr. Cagape. Since the development period is already done and I guess both faculties are now handling subjects I guess everything is back to normal. But if ever they decided to tap again a faculty to do a task for the university, hope they’ll consider my suggestion because I guess the students deserves to have what is best.
All of the information stated in this post may not be accurate so please feel free to react or comment if some mistakes have been done and I would really love to respond to your comments.
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