The pressures facing higher education aren't theoretical. They show up in year-over-year enrollment shifts, in line-item budget constraints, in faculty workloads, and in student persistence data. They reveal themselves in the gaps between vision and capacity — between what institutions know they must do, and what their systems are equipped to support.
Ellucian's 2025 Product Innovation Update is built for that reality.
Ellucian's 2025 Product Innovation Update responds to these realities not with incremental tweaks, but with integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to make institutional transformation achievable — and sustainable.
Powering the Student Lifecycle with Intelligence
Efforts to improve retention, workforce readiness, and engagement often compete with each other for resources — or operate in isolation. This update breaks down those silos by embedding intelligence into the systems institutions already use to serve students.
With lifelong learning, students are guided toward programs that align with their career goals and evolving industry needs. These pathways are informed by actual learner data — coursework, career goals, and employment history — translated into credentials that carry weight in the job market. As learners move through their AI-driven pathway, expanded self-service tools reduce wait times and improve response quality, even as staff bandwidth remains limited. And behind the scenes, predictive retention models make it easier to prioritize outreach and personalize support before a student falls off track.
The result isn't just automation. It's alignment — between services and strategy, between students and outcomes.
Upleveling Staff Productivity Across Campus
Work doesn't disappear — it shifts. And in higher education, too often the shift falls on overextended teams navigating disconnected processes and legacy systems. Ellucian's latest updates are built to remove the manual work such as form building, content creation, and hand-coded integrations while replacing it with intelligent, user-driven solutions that are both faster and more flexible.
Staff can now create digital forms using natural language, translating what they need into structured, shareable formats with minimal effort. Writing assistants improve the clarity and tone of institutional content, helping teams communicate effectively without adding production cycles. And when it comes to presenting timely, personalized information — registration alerts, payment reminders, deadlines — no-code tools make it possible to deliver those messages dynamically, without depending on technical staff.
This is not about adding new systems. It's about giving existing teams the means to move faster with fewer bottlenecks, and with greater confidence in the accuracy and reach of their work.
Future-Proofing Engagement with AI-Powered CRM
True engagement goes beyond outreach—it requires insight. Authentic connections with students and alumni are challenging when data is fragmented and staff are stretched, creating additional challenges to engage students and prospects.
Ellucian's CRM solutions are built to unify constituent data and help you turn it into action. Whether guiding a high school student through the admissions process, flagging risk indicators for an advisor, or deepening relationships with alumni and donors, Ellucian CRM brings together real-time intelligence, automated workflows, and infrastructure to meet today's expectations—and tomorrow's goals.
Advisors can now see early alerts and respond with targeted support. Advancement teams, like those at San Diego State Foundation, are using technology to eliminate manual processes in their outreach to over half a million alumni. "The future," their CFO shares, "is letting go of that technical work... and having a real human connection in a different and unique way than we've ever been able to before."
Deepening Engagement with Smart, Seamless Tools
Every interaction — a registration screen, a dashboard, a follow-up email — carries the potential to either build trust or erode it. Small frustrations accumulate. Good design isn't optional; it's operational.
That's why these innovations focus on reducing friction across critical moments in the student and staff experience. The registration process has been redesigned for ease and mobility, allowing learners to enroll from any device, making enrollment easier while reducing human errors. Advisors can register on a student's behalf, keeping learners on track to graduation.
The result is a more intuitive ecosystem. One where engagement doesn't depend on persistence alone, but on systems that anticipate what people need and make it easier to act.
Why Ellucian AI Is Different
AI isn't a feature — it's infrastructure.
At Ellucian, we've embedded AI across our ecosystem, trained it on the most comprehensive dataset in higher ed, and governed it with human-first, ethical oversight.
- Ethical by design — with built-in transparency and human controls
- Deeply integrated — not bolted on, but woven into daily workflows
- Built for people — helping staff and students make better decisions, not replacing them
See What's Possible
This isn't just a capabilities drop. It's a roadmap to resilience.
The 2025 Innovations Update was designed for institutions like yours — navigating pressure, embracing change, and looking for a partner that understands higher education from the inside out.
