In higher education technology, acquisitions are common. What is not common is how much uncertainty they can create for the campuses that depend on their SIS every day.
Over the past decade, SIS platforms have changed hands, merged product portfolios, and shifted strategies, often with little warning and even less transparency for the institutions that rely on them.
A recent acquisition of a widely used student information system is already raising questions across the industry, especially among career colleges, technical institutions, and other non-traditional schools. For many teams, the announcement triggered one immediate and reasonable question:
If your institution is using a system that was just acquired by a larger, traditional higher education vendor, this is a smart moment to evaluate risk. Not because you need to panic, but because timing matters. The earlier you assess your options, the more control you keep over your timeline, budget, and student experience.
This article breaks down:
When enterprise software companies acquire an SIS, the message is usually optimistic: more investment, stronger innovation, better integration.
But institutions that have lived through these transitions know the reality is often more complicated.
Vendors rarely acquire platforms to maintain the status quo. More often, acquisitions are intended to:
That is where the SIS acquisition impact becomes real. Not every SIS remains a long-term priority, and not every customer segment stays central to the product roadmap.
If your institution’s needs do not align with the acquiring vendor’s primary market, the risk is not always immediate failure. The risk is gradual deprioritization.
One of the biggest concerns raised by the latest acquisition is market alignment.
The acquiring vendor’s customer base is overwhelmingly composed of:
Meanwhile, career colleges, workforce-driven institutions, and many non-traditional schools often represent a smaller portion of that ecosystem. But they were the core audience of the acquired platform.
Career-focused institutions often run on operational realities that many traditional SIS roadmaps do not prioritize, including:
When those needs are no longer central to the product strategy, institutions often experience:
If you are actively evaluating SIS for career colleges or looking for the best SIS for non-traditional institutions, the question is simple:
Does your SIS still fit your institution, or are you expected to fit your vendor’s roadmap?
Talk to Student First about your SIS future.
Another red flag institutions should not ignore: product sprawl.
The acquiring vendor already supports multiple SIS platforms, each with its own architecture, customer base, and technical debt. Industry chatter has already suggested that at least one of those platforms is nearing end-of-life.
A familiar pattern often follows:
For customers of the newly acquired SIS, this raises a critical question:
Are we investing in a platform with a long-term future, or a short-term bridge?
Institutions that wait too long often find themselves facing:
If you want to stay in control, it is worth exploring student information system alternatives before someone else defines the timeline for you.
Explore proactive SIS alternatives with Student First
A second major concern after many acquisitions is technical direction.
Despite marketing language around “cloud,” many legacy SIS platforms were not built as true SaaS solutions. Instead, they rely on lift-and-shift migrations that move on-premise systems into hosted environments without fundamentally modernizing them.
A cloud native SIS is typically:
By contrast, lift-and-shift environments can lead to:
If you are being told “the cloud migration is coming,” the right question is:
Are we actually modernizing, or just changing where the system lives?
If you are comparing options, look for SaaS SIS higher education platforms that were built as SaaS from day one, not retrofitted later.
Large acquisitions are disruptive even when vendors say otherwise. They often trigger:
During that transition window, customer priorities often become harder to keep in focus.
For teams already stretched thin, uncertainty can become a cost. SIS stability impacts enrollment operations, compliance, financial aid workflows, student services, and the broader student experience.
Another uncomfortable truth: acquisitions often pause innovation rather than accelerate it. Engineering resources are redirected toward:
That usually leaves less capacity for:
If your team is expecting faster progress right away, it is worth planning for the possibility of a slower roadmap and fewer meaningful updates for a period of time.
As vendors grow larger, flexibility often shrinks.
Institutions may find themselves:
This can make it harder to:
Your SIS should empower your institution, not box it in.
At Student First, we believe institutions deserve clarity, not uncertainty driven by mergers and acquisitions.
Our SIS was designed from the ground up to support career-focused and non-traditional institutions, with a clear, long-term vision that isn’t subject to shifting corporate strategies.
Built as SaaS from day one. No lift-and-shift. No legacy baggage. If you are looking for a cloud native SIS, this is the foundation.
Designed around the operational, academic, and compliance needs of career colleges and workforce-driven institutions. If you need SIS for career colleges, this is the use case we serve every day.
Our roadmap is driven by customer input and student outcomes, not integration priorities after an acquisition.
No product sprawl. No uncertainty about which platform gets prioritized.
Student First has deep experience migrating career colleges, often in under a year, with a clear plan designed to reduce disruption.
Now Is the Time to Reevaluate Your SIS Strategy
If your SIS was just acquired, doing nothing is still a decision, and often the riskiest one.
Institutions that act early typically gain:
Institutions that wait often end up reacting to external deadlines.
Your SIS is too critical to leave its future to someone else’s acquisition strategy.
Whether you’re actively looking to change systems or simply want to understand your options, Student First is here to help you plan with confidence.
Schedule a conversation with our team to discuss your SIS future and see how Student First supports stability, innovation, and student success.
