The Pennsylvania State University, one of the world's leading higher education and research institutions, has selected Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud to support its "One Penn State 2025" strategic vision to transform education delivery, focusing on student engagement and support. The offering will be an integral component in the university's efforts to help reduce the cost of education while enhancing student outcomes and success.
Student Financial Planning is a key pillar in Oracle Student Cloud, a complete suite of modules designed to support the entire student lifecycle, including traditional and non-traditional learning models, with powerful automation and optimization capabilities.
Consistently ranked among the top one percent of the world's universities, Penn State includes 24 campuses, nearly 100,000 students and 31,000 faculty and staff, all focused on creating, sharing and applying knowledge to make a positive impact on communities across the world. Acknowledging the ever-increasing student debt and drop out crises U.S. college students face, Penn State will use Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud to help empower students to make more informed academic and financial aid decisions to accomplish their academic, professional and personal life goals.
By providing increased transparency and better management of financial aid resources, Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud and Oracle Student Cloud will streamline financial aid processes and deliver invaluable, data-backed insights into student behaviors and successes, thus freeing administrators to focus more on supporting the academic needs of its students.
"Penn State is pleased to select Oracle's Student Financial Planning product as a first step in transitioning our student system to the cloud and to further the institution's strategic goals," said Michael J. Büsges, senior director, Enterprise Projects at Penn State. "Oracle has an established track record in meeting the needs of its Higher Education customers, and we look forward to working together on this important initiative."
Higher education institutions today are under intense pressure to enroll best-fit students, improve outcomes, and ensure student access – and be able to do more with less. At the same time, today's students demand modern, consumer-like experiences and engagement with institutions. With $2.9 billion in financial aid (representing 15 million automated packages) already processed through Oracle Student Financial Planning Cloud, Oracle has proven solutions to help universities create a seamless student experience that leads to students' academic success. With Oracle Student Financial Planning, universities are able to spend more time advising students on their financial aid choices and less time packaging their aid, which leads to improved student outcomes, elevated institutional standing and greater operational efficiency. Oracle Student Financial Planning also supports traditional, continued and online educational programs, as well as administrators' compliance and integration needs.
"Leading institutions such as Penn State know that by simplifying and optimizing their operations they will be able to use resources efficiently and maximize funding sources," said Vivian Wong, group vice president of Higher Education Development at Oracle. "Oracle's commitment to supporting the higher education market includes our belief that no student should sacrifice their academic goals due to cost and we have created powerful cloud solutions to help universities tackle this challenge head on."
