I love the change to Daylight Savings Time. It means more time to spend outdoors after a long day of working or studying. It means the scourge of winter is finally coming to an end, replaced by the warm embrace of spring. College campuses across the nation will be filled with students-on lawns, in quads, under trees beginning to bloom.

Yet growth won't be found everywhere on campus. As students celebrate the change in seasons, leaders in higher education are looking towards the following school year, in anticipation of challenges that have become too common: shrinking budgets, smaller class offerings, and increasing tuition.

Complex problems such as these can benefit from agile software solutions. For example, one dilemma that every college faces is how to allocate financial aid. When admission decisions are released, colleges must employ complex models to determine how much aid to provide each potential attendee, while ensuring the package is competitive enough to entice the most in-demand students.

Oracle Student Financial Planning can help streamline this process by reducing processing costs, speeding up workflows for more accurate student aid projections, and helping transform financial aid into a strategic asset.