myBCcampus upgrades PASBC

myBCcampus: Changes to PASBC

"On July 27, 2006, the online admissions service (PASBC) was upgraded and further integrated into the myBCcampus portal. As a result, former PASBC login accounts have been removed. However, admission applications submitted prior to July 27 have not been affected by the upgrade."

I went to PASBC tonight, as I do from time to time, just to see if the application I was responsible for building in 1999 was still online. It's not. It's been replaced with a new version.

I'm proud that the application we built lasted from December 15th, 1999, until July 26, 2006, over 6 and a half years. While it's sad to see our application has been retired, but it's good that PASBC is still available to students, because it's a great time-saver for students and the post-secondary education system in BC.

According to a BCcampus report:

"A large number of post-secondary students use online educational resources. In 2004, 137,372 students applied to BC institutions through the online Post-Secondary Application Service of British Columbia (PASBC). Operated by BCcampus, this service helped 25,426 students (or 18.5 percent) apply to more than one institution. Close to 80 percent of applicants were from BC and the rest were from other jurisdictions, including other provinces and the United States."

Over 130,000 students in 2004 alone! I'm very proud to have been a part of something that was used by so many students. I wonder how many used the now-retired application over its lifespan...

Love live PASBC!

Footnote: For what it's worth, the retired application was written in Objective-C, was deployed on WebObjects 4.0.1 with Netscape Enterprise Server on Windows NT and used an Oracle database for storage.

Written on September 13, 2006