Applying for admission, paying tuition and signing up for on-campus housing are only the beginning of online services at BYU, said Christine Tolman, the director of Enterprise Solutions Support.

"Many, many more services will be online," Tolman said. "There's a general direction of making it as much as possible self-service."

Although transactions have only been available online for the past two to three years, benefits are already seen throughout campus, she said.

Productivity and efficiency are increased while cost is decreased, Tolman said.

"It's really taken off in the last two to three years," she said. "Technology has reached a level of maturity where we can take advantage of it."

Students see the majority of these advantages, said Jeff Tanner, associate dean of Admissions and Records.

However, one student said he is wary of those benefits, especially when computer glitches make online transactions difficult.

Noah Garfield, 18, a freshman from Bountiful, Davis County, majoring in anatomy, said he had to resubmit his financial services application a couple times.

After submitting his online application, Garfield said he did not receive a confirmation. He called the Financial Services office and learned his application had not been received.

He said he barely got his application in on time.

A few students also had problems paying tuition, said Lori Hardman, the tuition office supervisor.

The server overloaded when too many students waited until the deadline to pay, Hardman said.

"For the most part, it goes really well," she said.

Difficulties like these are taken into consideration when online transactions are designed, Tolman said.

"If it's not effective, it's not worth having," she said.

The admissions office has found online applications to be very effective, said Jeff Tanner, associate dean of Admissions and Records.

Efficiency in the office has greatly increased, Tanner said.

The admissions office now processes applications for all church schools, including BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii. Because of this, an additional 20,000 applications must be processed, Tanner said.

"We've been able to take on a much greater load with no additional personnel because of the online applications," Tanner said.

Even with the increased number of applications, acceptance letters are being mailed two months ahead of schedule this year. The personnel formerly used to type information into computers are now used to make quicker decisions, Tanner said.

International students are most benefited by online applications, he said. Sending documents back and forth by mail between countries often takes weeks.

However, international students often do not have technology needed for these transactions available to them at home, Tanner said.

BYU will continue to accommodate those with limited computer access, Tolman said.

"The question is always asked, how do people who don't have technology available do these things?" she said.

Paper contracts will continue to be available in the on-campus housing office, said Bart Stoddard, director of On-Campus Housing.

"We realize there are still some individuals who for whatever reason, prefer to use paper contracts," Stoddard said. "We will accommodate them."

Especially For Youth, a summer youth program held at BYU, transitioned completely to online applications without problems, said Duane Hiatt, the director of Editorial and Media Productions for Continuing Education.

"We haven't heard of anyone who hasn't been able to get computer access," Hiatt said. "There's so many computers out there in schools and libraries."

Previously, 25 people were temporarily hired by the Continuing Education office to process applications, Hiatt said. Now that a computer does the processing, the extra hires are not needed and the extra money is put back into the programs, he said.



Copyright Brigham Young University 19 Nov 2001