Top Higher Ed Trends of 2026…So Far

As Ellucian Live approaches, SIG’s experts weigh in on what trends they’ve been observing among clients in the first quarter of 2026. If you’re interested in learning more, or just want to connect, stop by and see us in Booth 622.

Data Integrity, Digital Front Doors, and The Rush to Automate

Angie Cummings, Senior Consultant

So far in 2026, institutions across higher education have largely moved past debating whether to modernize and are now focused on how quickly they can make meaningful progress.

Clients are shifting from acquiring new technology to realizing outcomes from what they already own, with automation becoming urgent as institutions invest in Intelligent Processes to reduce manual work across areas like financial aid, graduation processing, and student communications.

Data integrity remains the foundational challenge, prompting more direct conversations about fixing core data issues before adding new capabilities.

Digital front doors are becoming a priority as schools focus on creating more cohesive, role-based experiences for students and faculty, while analytics and insights are increasingly driving action in conversations that were once purely operational.

Last Year’s Curiosity is This Year’s Action

Adam Travis, Director of SaaS Strategy & Enterprise Solutions

It feels like the conversation has shifted around Banner SaaS and Ellucian SaaS Platform. Clients who last year were asking,

“What is SaaS?” are now asking, “How do we get there?” Clients who were not interested in Experience in the past are now getting it set up.

Last year’s curiosity is turning into this year’s action.

Maybe it was inevitable that momentum would build for Ellucian SaaS, but higher ed is known to move slowly on adopting new tech, and I am surprised at how quickly the momentum is shifting. Even if the implementations take time, the conversation has changed.

There is also a bit more discussion on process and emphasis on students, a trend I hope continues.

Skeletons From Yesterday’s “Great Ideas” Carry a Cost

John Brown, Senior Consultant

Institutions are recognizing the barriers and costs that decades-old broken processes, workarounds, and modifications to Banner create, and are working to eliminate these inefficiencies to fully leverage new functionality available in Banner SaaS and the Ellucian SaaS platform.

Skeletons from yesterday’s “great ideas” carry a cost both financially and in lost productivity that most institutions can no longer afford, especially when often no current employees know why they even exist.

Budget Remains a Challenge for Small Institutions

Ron Kwong, Senior Consultant

Small institutions are not proactively thinking about switching to SaaS.

I do see a school still on SSB 8 and integrating 3rd party applications, e.g. Coursedog, with the legacy Banner 8 integration instead of taking the available Ethos Integration option.

School budget is a challenge to these small institutions to modernize Banner. A transparent budget expense and savings report/presentation may help institutions make the Banner modernization decision.

AI-Driven Operations

Teressa Green, Senior Consultant

Schools are utilizing AI–driven operations to help improve efficiency.

A Hesitancy to Install Ethos, and Uncertainty About the Future

Marianne Gillfillan, Senior Consultant

The technical community is still skeptical of the SaaS platform and Ellucian’s ability to support it. Some DBAs have refused to install any part of the Ethos platform requirements because of that skepticism.

Members of the technical community bear the brunt of the pain when things don’t work and question how to address problems in the future.

I’m seeing sites purposely shift to other vendors because of Ellucian’s history from a technical perspective and not because of their longevity in the higher ed market, which should be their main selling point. This is going to be a critical decision point.

Emphasizing Ellucian’s deep history in higher ed technology should be at the forefront of any discussions we have with clients.

The tech community has a long history of encouraging Ellucian to stay current and do better. There is no reason why that cannot or should not continue in the future state of the SaaS environment.

However, there is also a concern about what their jobs will look like in the future. Helping the tech folks understand they will still be needed is critical to their acceptance of new environments as their roles evolve.

Preparing for SaaS by Taking Inventory of Integrations

Ian Becker, Senior DBA / Certified Cloud Architect

I am being asked more and more from my clients what they can do now to prepare for SaaS.

Taking an inventory of all their integrations is a great first step, as well as identifying where they have custom SQL jobs where they are directly accessing the database.

Running Student AR with Smaller Teams

Amber Herigon, Senior Consultant

Universities are increasingly running Student AR with smaller teams, and Ellucian SaaS helps them keep pace by automating manual tasks, reducing system maintenance, improving data accuracy, and expanding student self‑service—allowing lean staff to manage higher workloads more efficiently.

A Collective Response from the AR Team

Baselining as Necessity

The AR Team observes that Higher Education Student Accounts remains a relatively slow-moving functional area in terms of trend adoption, due in part to legacy processes, long-standing customization, compliance obligations, and the operational risk tied to revenue management.

This makes modernization more deliberate than fast-moving.

At the same time, baselining is emerging as a key trend in the AR space, especially for institutions whose Student Accounts practices still reflect decisions made decades ago, including those dating back to the SCT era.

For many schools, modernization is now less about adding something entirely new and more about simplifying legacy processes, customization reduction, and better utilizing the functionality already available in today’s platforms.

However, the AR Team also observes that EBPP vendors such as TouchNet, Flywire, and Nelnet are already operating with a more mature SaaS mindset.

Their solutions increasingly emphasize real-time connectivity, self-service, flexible payment options, and streamlined account management not only as operational improvements but as tools that can strengthen student relations, reduce friction, and support retention.

From this perspective, SaaS is emerging less as a technical upgrade and more as a strategic service model surrounding the Student Accounts experience, with baselining serving as a necessary step for institutions hoping to fully realize that value.