CtcLink has caused many issues for community college students in Washington state. CtcLink was installed at Spokane and Tacoma community colleges before the fall quarter of 2015. Problems with the $145 million system have continued to arise within the last four years. The system was supposed to perform the task of allowing students to quickly access their financial information and to help students enroll in classes. Instead, students and faculty have faced issues like not being paid on time, enrollment difficulties, and schedule and financial aid complications due to ctcLink being of poor quality, according to a report by Office of the Washington State Auditor. The system has also failed to meet federal requirements for colleges that handle student aid, the report said.
These issues have put a stop to ctcLink being installed at 31 other community colleges in Washington state.
Ciber, the company that built and agreed to run ctcLink filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April 2017. This was part of a deal made with Capgemini America, which is a French company, in order to buy Greenwood Village based Ciber’s U.S. assets for $50 million.
The financial ledgers that are shown in ctcLink do not appear to match the numbers that are found in the bank. In 2018, Spokane schools experienced more than a $18 million difference and Tacoma Community College experienced a $1.6 million difference. As of 2019, those numbers are continuing to rise.
“SBCTC and the colleges have not determined why the cash general ledger balances from ctcLink do not reflect the cash balances from the banks,” auditors said.
However, it does not seem like ctcLink itself is causing these financial issues. A review of the system showed no evidence that ctcLink is responsible for the differences. There is now multiple tracking systems set up to find the cause.
It turns out that tThe Washington state Board for Community and Technical Colleges did not accurately test ctcLink before installing the system. Lack of documentation from the colleges have resulted in misinformation being put on student waivers, tuition and fees. The ctcLink mobile app has been causing tiresome problems for SFCC students.
Running Start student Tucker Boniface is one of many students who have issues with the app.
“I think the redesign made it harder to search for classes,” Boniface wrote in the student feed of the SFCC app, a separate entity from ctcLink “In the previous version, there were lots of options to filter the classes, now you can either type in the class name band number or use a drop-down
menu which works, but having the extra options would be nice. Also, since the update to the website I have been unable to login on the app.”
Amanda Tomatich also voiced her opinion on the ctcLink mobile app.
“I hate that I can’t access the app anymore like I used to,” Tomatich also wrote on the SFCC app “I don’t know what happened after they upgraded the link, but the app on my phone does not work at all.”