Our existing student administration systems and process are outdated. The admin-related digital interface between students and the university requires urgent modernisation to meet the expectations of today's - and tomorrow's - students.
For staff, many of the student admin systems, tools and processes they need to access are cumbersome, time-consuming and temperamental. In turn, critical activities relating to student records and our data landscape are labour intensive, difficult to scale up, and poorly aligned with our future needs.
It is already clear that we will need to make our education offer far more flexible to ensure it is attractive to future students. Increased flexibility depends on having systems and processes in place with the capacity to support it. Our systems will need to be more efficient, effective and user-friendly, and these are qualities that contemporary students and staff have a right to expect from a major institution such as ours.
It is important to note that our current student administration costs are high compared to other institutions of a similar size, yet user satisfaction levels are low. This is the case even before we factor in expected further growth in student numbers and increased study flexibility.
The StARS programme has been designed to address these challenges and to ensure we can deliver high quality, resilient services to both students and staff now and into the future.