Understanding the basics: What is a higher education student information system?
Learn how modern higher education student information software enables educational leaders to foster student success, develop more effective business processes, gain deeper insights across the organization, and navigate a changing landscape.
Higher education institutions face mounting pressure. College enrollment has been on the decline for a decade, with undergraduate enrollment falling 15% from 2010 to 2021.
Increasingly, students are looking for other educational options, such as career pathways that go beyond traditional courses and on-campus learning. And with fewer traditional students enrolling out of high school, colleges are going to have to rethink their enrollment strategy and traditional business models.
“We already knew that demographic trends were going to affect higher ed enrollment and transform the makeup of the student body—and then the pandemic came,” says Joellen Shendy, product strategy director, Workday Student. “Now we’ve seen not only an acceleration of trends, but expectations have also changed. We’ve introduced things like hybrid learning and 24/7 access to services. The future is this new flexibility.”
This all requires higher education institutions to operate at peak efficiency to ensure student satisfaction, fiscal health, and the ability to adapt to future needs.
Now more than ever, higher education institutions need to be flexible and agile—not only to best manage their growth but to also give colleges and universities quick and accessible insights into their students, faculty, and operations.
What is a higher education student information system?
Although educational institutions use a variety of software and technologies, higher education software typically refers to a higher education information system or student information system (SIS). These are programs that help educational institutions manage data and processes related to students’ educational journey: admission, enrollment, academic records, academic advising, curriculum management, financial aid, and more.
Here’s another way to think about it: companies have a human resources (HR) system to manage a worker’s “employee lifecycle,” which encompasses processes such as hiring, onboarding, skills development, and more. Likewise, colleges and universities also need a system to manage the end-to-end educational journey for students—from recruiting and admission to graduation and beyond.
Why do higher education institutions need a student information system?
Most of the software systems at educational institutions were installed before email, social media, and the internet were anywhere close to mainstream, so institutions have continually been updating higher education software platforms to integrate with the latest technologies. But these often-patchwork hybrid systems are especially under pressure given the changing digital needs of students—including nontraditional students—and new modes of education.
Higher education institutions are recognizing that organizational agility is key to driving long-term growth and digital innovation.
As learning trends and student demographics continue to shift, schools will increasingly look to engage with students throughout their entire academic career and have access to information to help match students with courses, co-curricular activities, advisors, mentors, and more. A seamless student experience is the best student experience, and with all data in one place, institutions and students can unlock insights when and where they’re needed.
Ultimately, higher education software must foster student success. To do that, administrators, faculty, and students need a system that is as intuitive and easy to use as other technologies in their daily lives.
What are the benefits of a modern higher education student information system?
Legacy systems in higher education are disjointed, outdated, and don’t reflect the way educational institutions operate today. Many important functions that are a part of modern higher education institutions simply weren’t around 20 to 30 years ago when existing systems were built.
What’s more, higher education institutions are recognizing that organizational agility is key to driving long-term growth and digital innovation. But that doesn’t mean the world of higher education is facing digital transformation exams. According to the Workday global survey “Closing the Acceleration Gap: Toward Sustainable Digital Transformation,” 60% of higher education leaders say the pace of digital transformation has slowed from where it was a year ago, or they expect it to slow down in the future.
The research suggests that many colleges and universities are grappling with digital transformation challenges exacerbated by the pandemic and are unable to adequately evolve strategies. To address this problem, as well as their underlying digital strategy gaps, institutions must first take a more foundational step. That means creating and implementing a data strategy. But the ability to make smart investments in digital is contingent on having the right data to guide decisions.
How does a student information system help with data?
Campuses and higher education institutions are like small cities, with many moving parts, all of which impact each other. A deeper understanding of college operations and students requires deeper insights and tracking, which starts with data. Getting meaningful data to the granular level needed by using spreadsheets is hard and time-consuming. And even if a system is more modern, the challenge is extracting all this data from many disparate sources. In the best-case scenario, higher ed leaders get rear-view insights.
By modernizing their technology infrastructure—replacing brittle, fragmented systems with a platform that seamlessly and securely unifies data across the institution—higher education leaders enable real-time access to accurate, decision-ready data.
Higher education needs to transform data into a strategic asset so that institutions can best meet the needs of students, budgets, faculty, and facilities—now and in the future.
A 360-degree view of data enables institutions to identify which programs are cost centers and which ones generate revenue, and then analyze data by program of study.
With an agile higher education platform, educational leaders are able to foster student success, develop more effective business processes, gain deeper insights across the organization, and navigate a changing landscape.
What is Workday’s student information system (SIS): Workday Student?
Workday higher education software is called Workday Student, a single cloud-based system that can work seamlessly with Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Financial Management. With Workday, higher education institutions can bring an entire campus into one modern, agile, easy-to-use platform.
Workday built higher education software designed for today’s learners. Our education partners told Workday that current student systems are disjointed, outdated, and don’t reflect the way they work today. Workday Student was built with the keen understanding that administrators, faculty, and students needed a system that was as intuitive and convenient as the other technologies they use in their daily lives.
Workday has created an SIS that brings a modern experience to students, giving them and administrators the flexibility to perform tasks anytime, anywhere, whether on a laptop in the library or a smartphone at the beach.
Workday Student is a system built hand in hand with insight from customer design partners to bring a truly modern student information system to market—the only end-to-end student product with live customers.
How is Workday Student different from other student information systems?
A majority of institutions use an SIS that is at least 20 years old—older than many of their students. These institutions are struggling with outdated systems and want to move to a cloud-based solution that offers a consistent, user-friendly digital experience with more personalized engagement—enabling students to register for courses, track their work-study hours, manage financial aid, and request an advising appointment, all through a mobile device. We’re truly able to meet these students where they are—a benefit more crucial than ever before.
At Workday, we believe the baseline of modern higher education software is having a complete view of all data—finance, HR, and student—in a single cloud-based system to enable full data analysis and easy access to information.
With all data in one place, institutions and students can unlock insights when and where they’re needed.
With a modern higher education management system such as Workday Student, higher education officials can use dashboards to monitor enrollment trends, observe if there’s a demand for a course, manage open faculty positions, track tuition revenue by program area, and keep tabs on course selection by enrollment to ensure timely staffing.
Students can use dashboards to enroll in classes online, receive alerts regarding due dates, get immediate feedback as to whether they successfully enrolled in their classes, and track their academic path toward graduation. Using rich data from student profiles, the Workday Student platform can recommend academic support programs to enrich the student experience.
A 360-degree view of data enables institutions to identify such things as which programs are cost centers and which ones generate revenue, and then analyze data by program of study. With Workday Student, institutions gain data-driven insights into areas such as the health of their applicant pool, student trends, and course demands—enabling them to make the most informed decisions both now and in the future.
Learn about Workday Student Management Software.