grulephic design

This is absolutely outrageous. I wish this was all false, but I've experienced first hand how incredibly horrendous university websites can be. And I'm pretty sure that's an international experience.

1000 upvotes for this. Academia is so fucking stupid. And people pay big money to be abused by these institutions.

I've seen firsthand how a school district's website gets built and let me tell you, the website designer fights tooth and nail to design a usable website. Everyone else fights them to create trash. That university's process is probably like that because the designer gave up and let the professors design their own shit and that's the way they wanted it.

My university's websites are actually OK.
The worst part is by far the fragmentation, where it's sometimes easier to use a search engine if you're looking for something specific.

My school gave up on printing/binding theses, so they also gave up on thesis formatting requirements. As long as your advisor approved the thesis and the title page had all the relevant info, it could be formatted however you wanted.
After finishing my dissertation, I spent maybe 20 minutes emailing the library staff about dissertation edits (date format/placement on title page mainly) and otherwise was told any other requested changes were optional so long as my advisor signed off. I have to get my dissertation printed and bound myself, but that is a small price to pay compared to the nightmare that is univeristy thesis format compliance.

Don't you have a student council in America you can complain to about such stuff? From my experience studying in Germany (and even more so in Austria) the student council (oder student union) has very good connections to the administrative and scientific staff to pass feedback along and also get invited to (mandatory for the Uni) semesterly quality-assessment-circles to assess the "studibility" of the program, which also includes evaluating such processes.

I must have lucked out by graduating in the summer (and having a more straightforward process to get my thesis formatting checked)

If you're looking at this situation in a couple years, consider student organizing to change it

If you're lucky, this abuse is personified by some hideously dated mascot character. Like SIS Man.
A manic face that says "we are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death."
- Why is he touching himself?????
  
  Anticipation.

So glad I was done with school before I had to deal with any sort of online submissions. Might not have been the case had I finished grad skool, though, so that's a dodged bullet.