OAU Transcripts: The Problems ETX Had that TPS Would Inherit
From
the day OAU disengaged ETX from its transcripts services and puts TPS in charge
of the business, I have been looking forward to seeing what any alumnus of OAU would
be happy about as a better change in the request, production and delivery of their
OAU transcripts. It’s been about three weeks since the disengagement of ETX from
the transcripts services after the hell many OAU alumni had gone through when
they requested for their transcripts via ETX. I have observed a few things that
I will talk about now.
Firstly,
I would like to reiterate this, contrary to what many think, the delay in OAU transcripts
delivery is not the fault of ETX, it is the fault of OAU. ETX only had three
functions in the processing of the transcripts you requested for: (1) they take
the order via their website; (2) they print out your order/application and
submit it to the school’s Transcripts Department for the production of your
transcripts ( a lot of things happen at this stage that can make your
transcripts never be produced or be produced very late); and after the transcripts
have been produced and vetted by the Principal Assistant Registrar (PAR), they
are transferred to ETX, (3) ETX dispatches them if they are to be sent by
courier. But if they are to be sent by electronics means, only the PAR can
upload the transcripts to the database (something that works like Dropbox),
generate a link for it, and then send the link to the receiver which they would
use to download the transcripts from the database one time.
I
have shrunk the processes of the transcripts, but from what I have mentioned,
you should be able to notice that after your transcripts application had been
printed out by ETX and submitted to the Transcripts Department, ETX does not
know what’s up about your transcripts anymore until it is transferred back to
them for dispatch (if it is a paper transcripts to be sent via courier). This is
why ETX doesn’t have any update to give their customers after the “Alumni
Approved, Searching for Records”. This also explains why they cannot give out
numbers or email addresses for their customers to contact, and even when you
send them a message via the ETX platform, they can only send you a message that
would not relate to what is going on about your transcripts, and it’s because they
do not know. They can only send generic messages.
Now,
from what has been pointed out about how things could go wrong during the
production of your transcripts, I hope it is noted that this means during the
production of your transcripts by the Transcripts Department (which would
involve several offices), if anything goes wrong at any of these stages, you
may never get your transcripts. And at least 60% of the times, something goes
wrong. If OAU transcripts services would improve, the things that go wrong
during the production of the transcripts must be fixed, not just about changing
who is in charge of the transcripts services. I have been expecting some
changes in terms of this but I have not seen much. This means TPS would still
have this problem too.
If
the OAU results database that’s always crashing doesn’t stop crashing, nothing
is going to change. If the results that have been lost during the previous
crashes are not found from the papers and the departments and re-uploaded to
every new database they introduce, the problem is going to remain the same. If
the staffs of the Transcripts Department would not get up and go help the
persons requesting for their transcripts collate their results at their
department, this problem would remain the same. If the staffs at the department
don’t take the collation of results seriously, the problem is going to remain
the same. So ETX or TPS, if the causes of the problems aren’t solved, changing
the company is in charge of the works might not bring much change.
In
the aspect of communication, which ETX was bad at, TPS would still have that
problem too, and here is why; just like ETX, OAU is never good at information. You
can imagine how long it took for OAU to have a social media account (I think
they joined Twitter in 2019 or 2020). The OAU website is rarely updated. So I
do not expect the information culture to suddenly change; people who are
expecting their transcripts are still going to be left in the dark about the processing
or their transcripts, and these people would need to know if something is wrong
about their results so that they can send people to go help them out in doing
things that need to be done instead of waiting for their transcripts that may
never come.
People who read this also have interest in reading this:
Why Most OAU Transcripts Don’t Get Sent Ever or Get Sent But Several Months After Applying
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