Many faculty and students said they believe the University needs to make changes to Oasis, but money for the new system is hard to find.

The administration understands the need for a new online system that allows students to register for classes and track important information but just doesn’t have the money for it, pushing a new system down on the University’s long list of priorities, said Rebecca Macon, the University registrar.

Macon, who has been trying to get approval for a new student system for the past four years, said she strongly believes Oasis needs a major change.

“This is the worst student system I’ve ever worked with,” Macon said. “I’ve worked in higher education for over 30 years, and this is the worst I’ve seen.”

She said the system should be more intuitive, friendlier and easier to use. With a newer and better system, it would be easier to reset pin numbers, request transcripts and organize student information, Macon said.

“In these hard times we can’t say that we’re a higher priority than hiring more faculty,” Macon said. “We can’t say that. It’s definitely a struggle.”

To change the system, the University needs a mandate from the Board of Regents to supply necessary funds.

“It is a very old system developed 20, 30 years ago,” said Rehan Khan, the associate chief information officer of Enterprise Information Technology Services. “Most of the people that created Oasis are no longer available, so it’s very difficult to support right now.”

Macon said the University is the only school in Georgia that uses Oasis instead of Banner – a newer, more relational system. She said it’s hard to implement policy changes with a system that only a few understand. “For us, it is a very labor intensive process,” she said.Khan said, “The Banner product is more modern and more intuitive. Oasis is very functionally rich but the presentation is old. We have a lot of green screens and not the drag and drop like most people want.”

Khan said she hopes the next student system implemented will function more like Google or Amazon.

“Because [students] don’t use [Oasis] every day, it’s not that big of an issue with students,” Khan said. “But with the administration side that uses it on a daily basis, it is very frustrating to have to work with an old system.”

Several students said they didn’t have a problem with Oasis overall, but certain aspects should change.

“I wish it was 24 hours so that you could go on whenever you needed to change your classes or pay your bills since I’m always up kind of late,” said Callie Davis, a junior from Norcross. “But I like all the information it has on it.”

“I don’t mind Oasis,” said Kristin Stevens, a sophomore from Macon. “Sometimes it’s slow, but I also don’t like the fact that we only get 90 minutes [of access] a day. I’ve never exceeded the time, but what if I need to? I don’t see why it matters if we’re on longer during the day.”

Other than the time constraints, another student said she finds it difficult to register for classes.

“I’m especially not a fan of Oasis for registration issues because there is no waiting list,” said Anna Torrance, a junior from Lawrenceville. “The only way to get a class that you want is to basically be on Oasis constantly and pray that someone will drop the class you want.”

Macon said she is working on several larger projects to make registering for classes easier and needs feedback from the students.

“We’re trying to work with what we have and hope it’s doing OK,” she said.

Macon and Khan are currently working on a new project called DegreeWorks that will replace the current degree audit reporting system and allow students to plan their schedules several semesters in advance.