6 Top Student Information Systems for Universities in Higher Ed Across 2025 and 2026

Is your student system ready for the way your university will recruit, teach and bill learners in 2026, or is it still built for the intake you had a decade ago? If you're not sure, you're not alone, and the answer usually becomes obvious at the busiest points of the academic year.

This guide gives you six platforms that held up well across 2025 and 2026, with a quick facts table, practical notes and the trade-offs for each. You'll start with Full Fabric, the pick for business schools, specialist universities and professional education.

How to Get the Most from These Tools

You'll get far more from any of these platforms if you prepare before the contract starts.

Write down how your processes run today, from first enquiry to graduation, and mark the steps where people re-key data or wait on another team. That list becomes your requirements, and it shows vendors exactly what you need them to fix.

Clean your data before you move it. Duplicate applicants, old course codes and missing details will follow you into a new system unless someone deals with them first.

If your platform allows it, go live in stages. Launching admissions or the CRM before the student record means your next intake isn't riding on a single cutover weekend.

Finally, book training time for your staff before go-live, and run a trial statutory return well ahead of the first real deadline. Name an owner for every integration too, so someone is responsible when a connection changes after an upgrade.

#1 Full Fabric

Quick facts	Full Fabric
Platform access	€12,000 a year
Payments	Stripe, Flywire, PayPal, Adumo
Certification	ISO/IEC 27001:2022
UK support	HESA, UCAS connector

If money is where your student journeys get messy, start with Full Fabric. Its admissions module handles deposits and payment plans, and its commerce layer runs an application hub and product catalogue, with transactions processed through Stripe, Flywire, PayPal or Adumo. You can even register a company's group of learners in one go, which suits executive education and corporate programmes.

You won't need to reconcile those payments with a separate student system later, because the CRM, admissions, commerce and SIS all sit on one data model. The learner who paid a deposit is the same record your registry later enrols, grades and issues a transcript to.

For your registry, there's course and calendar setup, marks, re-registration, transcripts, diplomas and stackable credentials, plus HESA returns if you're in the UK.

You'll pay the €12,000 platform fee each year plus usage charges, and implementation is a separate one-off cost. Don't expect finance or HR modules; you'll keep those in your existing systems.

You also keep the CRM you've already invested in, because bidirectional connectors cover Salesforce, Dynamics and HubSpot. DocuSign and PandaDoc handle signed agreements, Turnitin checks submitted work, and Canvas or Blackboard link through the API, so your wider stack stays intact while admissions and records come together.

#2 Jenzabar One

Quick facts	Jenzabar One
Components	Student, Financial Aid, Finance, HCM
Deployment	Cloud
Market	US
Starting price	Not listed

For a US private college, Jenzabar One brings academic records, aid, accounts and payroll into one cloud database, so you manage one supplier instead of four.

You'll find it particularly suited to adult and part-time learners. Jenzabar Finance supports flexible and recurring payment plans, and Jenzabar Communications lets you reach students across several channels.

In 2024, IDC rated Jenzabar a Leader for North American higher education SIS. Outside the US, though, there's nothing on UK or European reporting, and no public prices.

Fundraising, online teaching support, reporting and workflow automation all live in the same platform, and a campus marketplace lets you sell services. Jenzabar is based in Boston, points to more than four decades in the sector and names Rogue Community College as a customer.

#3 Classe365

Quick facts	Classe365
How you pay	Enrolment-based core, flat-rate extras
Price change	New model from 1 January 2025
Annual renewal	10% off
Public tier prices	Shown only as images

Small colleges and training providers get a lot in one Classe365 subscription: student records, registers, report cards, a learning module, admissions, degree audit and payments, with nothing extra to buy.

Budgeting is straightforward: you pay a base charge tied to your enrolment, a flat price for each extra module however many students use it, and 10% less if you renew annually. Qualifying not-for-profits get a further 15%.

Check your reporting needs before you commit, because national returns aren't mentioned. If you don't file them, it's one of the simplest options here.

Families and learners have their own logins and apps, so fewer routine questions reach your team, and developers can use the public API. Once you pass 1,000 students, expect enterprise terms and a sales conversation.

#4 Tribal SITS

Quick facts	Tribal SITS
Market	UK universities
Regulators covered	OfS, HESA, SLC, Graduate Outcomes survey
Looking ahead	Lifelong Learning Entitlement, January 2027
Starting price	Not listed

If you're a large UK university, SITS is built around your regulatory calendar. You'll produce your HESA, OfS, SLC and Graduate Outcomes returns from it, and run Clearing on the Web during admissions.

Retention gets proper attention: your registry can watch engagement and attendance, and work through extenuating circumstances cases right up to appeal. Students have an Award Predictor and university apps, and survey tools collect their feedback each term.

By Tribal's count, more than 60% of UK universities run SITS, and it's getting customers ready for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement that arrives in January 2027. Independent providers are sent to its EBS product instead.

Apprenticeship degrees are tracked from the ILR return through to the workplace, and finance tools follow each account from first fee to debt management. Overseas students can pay in their own currency, useful if you recruit heavily abroad.

#5 TechnologyOne OneEducation

Quick facts	TechnologyOne OneEducation
Type	SaaS ERP for education
Regions	Australia, New Zealand, UK
Subscription	SaaS+, setup and upgrades bundled
Starting price	Not listed

If you want to replace your student, finance and HR systems together, OneEducation puts them on one data model, along with payroll, timetabling and curriculum management.

You'll appreciate the SaaS+ model if budgeting is a headache, because implementation, support and upgrades are included. TechnologyOne carried an AWS partner of the year badge for 2025, and standard support is included in the subscription.

You can only buy it in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and if you just need a student system, a full ERP may be more than you want.

Course design tools came in with TechnologyOne's purchase of CourseLoop, and you can schedule exams and book rooms in the same suite, while learners use the DxP Student portal. TechnologyOne has been making ERP software since 1987 and puts its student count above 6.5 million.

#6 Workday Student

Quick facts	Workday Student
Platform	Shared with Workday HCM and Financial Management
Regional pages	ANZ, Canada, US
Extensibility	Workday Extend
Starting price	Not listed

If your HR and finance already run on Workday, Student lets you see students, staff and budgets on one platform. Advisors get AI planning tools and at-risk alerts, and students get a mobile-first app.

You'll find large deployments on record, including the University of Arkansas System, which runs 14 institutions on Workday HCM, Finance and Student.

Prices aren't published, UK reporting isn't covered on the overview pages, and Workday notes that unreleased features may change.

If you do go ahead, you can build extra apps with Workday Extend, add partner tools from its Marketplace and use skills intelligence to connect study pathways to workforce needs. Australian users include Deakin and the University of Queensland.

At a Glance

Platform	Best for	Region	Published pricing
Full Fabric	Business schools and specialist universities	UK, EU, US support	€12,000 per year platform fee
Jenzabar One	US private colleges	US	Not listed
Classe365	Small providers	Not listed	Modular model
Tribal SITS	Large UK universities	UK	Not listed
TechnologyOne OneEducation	Back-office consolidation	Australia, New Zealand, UK	Not listed
Workday Student	Workday customers	ANZ, Canada, US	Not listed

Conclusion

Six platforms, six different answers to the same question, so start from what your institution actually needs. If your learners arrive through many routes and pay in many ways, Full Fabric is your strongest choice, keeping deposits, payment plans, grades and transcripts on one record. Jenzabar One suits US private colleges, Classe365 suits small providers on a budget, Tribal SITS suits large UK registries, TechnologyOne suits back-office consolidation and Workday Student suits existing Workday customers. Whichever you shortlist, ask for a full price including implementation before you commit time to demos.