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Background
In September 2025, Anthology Inc., the parent company of a range of higher ed technology products, including Anthology Student and Finance & HCM, filed for bankruptcy. The ensuing restructuring resulted in a breakup of the company across multiple buyers and in December, Ellucian completed its acquisition of Anthology’s SIS and ERP business, bringing in more than 260 Anthology customers into its portfolio.
Ellucian has committed to maintaining existing Anthology systems and honoring contractual terms. What remains less clear is what institutions can plan on beyond that, such as what an Anthology Student-specific development roadmap will look like under Ellucian’s ownership.
Questions to ask
This is a critical time for the operational infrastructure of institutions relying on Anthology Student. Some of the questions you should be asking:
- What does Ellucian’s product investment in Student look like going forward?
- How does this align with our institution’s roadmap?
- What does new ownership mean for your support team, implementation timeline, and contract renewal?
- If your institution is mid-implementation, what does your go-live timeline look like under the new support structure?
- For those on the legacy CampusNexus platform, how does this affect your options and any timelines?
What can your institution do today?
What’s truly right depends on where you stand today, but here are some starting paths to begin navigating the future:
Stabilize and Stay Supported
If you’re live or mid-implementation, ensuring continuity is a priority. Extend your internal team’s capacity, maintain system integrity, and have expert hands on deck ready to support and alleviate your team as they navigate new vendor relationships.
A stable workforce providing your support is key to assuring you’re in a stable position while you plan your longer-term strategy.
Optimize Operations
Unless you resolve to immediately migrate away from your platform, consider protecting and extending your SIS investments by engaging a partner to conduct process optimization and compliance posture reviews.
Lingering issues and workarounds from implementation, or legacy process decisions, can burden your team. A thoughtful partner will help you get even more out of the system while you take a look at the long-term picture.
Plan, Potentially Transition
Some institutions were already considering platform changes prior to the news, so now there’s heightened urgency.
SIS and ERP changes are exhausting and expensive. An important strategy to minimize migration risk is leveraging experts in the Anthology enrollment-based data structure to facilitate migrations to other SIS platforms.
Many have migrated to the modern Anthology SaaS platforms, but not many have moved away; especially from the SIS.
Need some guidance?
Deer Brook and HigherEdBPO are working with institutions across the Anthology community and helping them navigate this situation right now.
We’re here if you want some experts to help you identify your options.
