UCLA and Oracle have settled a dispute over a troubled ERP project originally budgeted at $120 million, with the vendor waiving $1.31 million in outstanding fees and granting $3.1 million in credits against future charges.
In May, the University of California's Compliance and Audit Committee recommended a settlement [PDF] of UCLA's pre-litigation dispute with Oracle, which the Board of Regents approved.
According to documents released in response to a California Public Records Act request, UCLA stopped paying its Oracle subscription in September 2024 over what it described as shortcomings in grants management functionality.
UCLA and Oracle signed their first agreement relating to the project – called Ascend – in November 2017. The project had a revised go-live date of January 2025, but was paused in mid-2024. The settlement records UCLA's allegation that "the ERP Cloud Services did not perform as warranted in the Oracle Agreement."
"The ERP Cloud Services lacked sufficient functionality to meet the University's requirements and could not be used by the University as expected," said the document, which was seen by .
It continued that "the University incurred costs and delays due to the ERP Cloud Services inability to meet the University's requirements." It added: "As a result, Oracle breached the Oracle Agreement."
Under the settlement, UCLA agreed to pay Oracle $350,000 of the $1.66 million in outstanding invoices. Oracle then waived the remaining balance – $1.31 million – and credited $3.1 million against future Oracle fees. These credits expire at the end of May 2028.
The agreement says the university should not make public statements about its terms, which are to remain confidential, although both parties acknowledged that UCLA is subject to the California Public Records Act.
has asked Oracle to comment.
The settlement was obtained by California resident Eric Guyer, founder of independent Oracle cost consultancy Advizant.
In a social media post, he said that the credits suggested UCLA would continue with the project in some form, with Oracle as the main vendor.
Guyer suggested Oracle most likely discounted its software to win the "coveted" UCLA logo. He estimated the total subscription value at around $12 million over ten years.
He said Oracle tends to move decisively when unpaid bills on clear contractual terms back it into a corner. "This is rare despite the lore of its litigious nature. Everyone has a line. In any case, UCLA's claim probably went to Oracle because it was the easiest to point a finger at: consultants sell effort, not outcomes, and internal staff can only be fired."
However, he said the average customer should not conclude that claiming a breach and stopping payment is advisable.
"It can be effective, but is an exceedingly painful path," he claimed. "In this rare case, Oracle agreed to eat some shit at the end of a poorly planned implementation in exchange for UCLA's silence in the fiercely competitive higher ed market. In other public implementation fights, Oracle struck first or countersued, with press releases to match."
UCLA serves around 49,000 students and manages a budget of around $11 billion.
A 2025 report [PDF] presented to the University of California Board of Regents' Finance and Capital Strategies Committee said that among the "Top Issues, Risks and Challenges" the UCLA project leadership faced was "Oracle's lack of responsiveness – particularly regarding licensing costs and support." It added that the project's original $120 million budget was revised down to $98.9 million, with $13.5 million remaining as of December 31, 2024.
The report, covering the period through December 2024, said the project started in April 2018 and was originally expected to end in July 2020. The document described it as a "comprehensive business transformation initiative" to modernize the university's financial, budgetary, and research administration operations by moving to Oracle Cloud SaaS. It also included retrofitting any systems that connected with the main finance system.
The procurement module, BruinBuy Plus, went live in January 2024, but the main "Oracle Financials go-live has been paused since August 2 [2024] and is undergoing program assessment," the document said.
Among the mitigation plans in the review was to "finalize the decision on whether to continue with the current vendor or explore alternatives" based on a reassessment of the tool and provider.
According to the settlement document, the University told Oracle via email on June 20, 2025 that the "University wanted to terminate the Ascend project and the ERP Cloud Services."
In May, a spokesperson for UCLA said in a statement to : "The University continues to evaluate the most effective path forward for financial systems modernization."
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the University and Oracle have agreed to make no further claims for damages related to the contract dispute, and neither has admitted liability.
According to a report from campus newspaper Daily Bruin, UCLA was still using legacy financial systems software designed in the 1980s when the budget was just seven percent of its current size. It was a mainframe-based "ancient relic of a system," former project steering committee member Reem Hanna-Harwell told the newspaper.
The Daily Bruin reported that at least $213 million had been spent and cited a May 2024 town hall presentation projecting total costs of roughly $286 million. ®