Comment by Vegenoid
These kinds of mysteries usually have a frustrating and mundane answer. The people with the power to make the decision:
- were incompetent and just went with a big name, or
- made the decision due to salespeople (social pressure and/or gifts), or
- had interests that did not align with the org (ex. resume padding)
But who knows, maybe there's a good reason they went with Oracle.
You are likely correct. My best guess is they hired someone in IT from outside of higher education that had extensive experience with Oracle and had deployed it successfully in the past and so it was always going to be Oracle even though it was a poor fit.