PeopleSoft shareholders voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to keep their board of directors intact, delivering another blow to Oracle's $9.4-billion takeover bid for the software company.

College and university officials said they were pleased by the vote, which was widely seen as an expression of support for the board's resistance to the takeover attempt.

Mike Ten Eyck, president of the PeopleSoft Higher Education User Group, said the vote helps somewhat to ease the fears about a possible merger.

"I'm not as nervous about it as I once was," said Mr. Ten Eyck, who is manager of administrative information systems at Texas Christian University. "It would be nice if it would just go away." The user group represents about 345 colleges that rely on PeopleSoft products.

More than 700 colleges and universities use PeopleSoft's software products. Many college officials are worried that Oracle would phase out PeopleSoft software if the merger went through, despite assurances from Oracle that it wouldn't.

Oracle had initially hoped to pack the PeopleSoft board with its supporters. But when the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to block the takeover in February, Oracle decided to withdraw its nominees to concentrate on the lawsuit. Soon afterward, the European Union and Australia also raised concerns about the possible merger.

Oracle is offering to pay $26 per PeopleSoft share, higher than the share's $18.59 closing price on the Nasdaq exchange on Thursday. The price was up 77 cents for the day. PeopleSoft shareholders have until June 25 to decide whether to sell.

Until Thursday's vote, some analysts had wondered whether shareholders would second-guess the board of directors' position on the takeover bid, since PeopleSoft's stock price has fallen about 21 percent since January 1. Instead, about 95 percent of shareholders voted to re-elect members to the current board, a typical percentage for such votes.

Michael Zastrocky, vice president for academic strategies at Gartner Inc., a technology-consulting firm, said the shareholders' vote indicates that they haven't been swayed by Oracle's offer. "They haven't at this point," he said. "But that could change."

While the Oracle takeover bid isn't dead yet, Mr. Zastrocky said, it has been severely weakened -- to the point that college and university officials don't need to concern themselves with it. "Universities should just continue to plan and operate as they always have," he said.

Nevertheless, Oracle plans to fight the Justice Department lawsuit and continues to argue that the merger would be legal and beneficial to consumers.

PeopleSoft officials said they were pleased with the outcome of the shareholders meeting. Oracle had no comment.