Background on Moo U

Some Background. Living in the Northeast Corridor in the shadow of the Ivies helped me realize how different much of my college experience was. I went to "Cow Colleges", often called Moo Us. Though, it seems to me Michigan State, Virginia Tech and Purdue certainly deserve at least as much respect as they get.

Think about what is involved in even the major issues of maintaining a university database system that manages student information starting with the beginning of the student's university experience.

application
admissions
financial aid
matriculation
registration
degree progress

Information needs to be gathered on people even before they enroll. The college search and application process is quite involved. Think about the sorts of information that is required to even get the application and admissions process flowing.

name of student

contact information

parent info

academic background

testing

potential majors

extracurricular activities

Much of this information can get quite involved considering the varieties of family structures that exist.

Information also needs to be gathered that relates to financial aid. My experience is that financial aid packages have a huge impact on where students decide to matriculate. Some of the financial aid information that needs to be gathered is listed below.

sources of financial aid

grants

loans

need assessment

family contributions

sports scholarships

The final aspect of the Moo U student databases we will focus on relates to the courses that each has taken. Not much more will be said at present.

In general, it should be obvious that this presentation greatly simplifies the overall situation and requirements. But it should still turn out that as we develop this case plenty of realistic situations will be developed. Part of the purpose of this example is to get students to see how involved a database system can get. The variety of information and the nature of its structure doesn't easily fit into a dbms.