The UAE saw the highest university enrolment in a decade for the 2024-25 academic year, with over 57,000 new students admitted to the region's institutions — up 13% on the previous year. These students came from both the Emirates and abroad, with female students accounting for 54 percent of enrolments, reflecting the growing diversity of the region’s student population.
In Saudi Arabia, the largest higher education sector in the GCC, enrolments are also predicted to rise from 2.2 million students to approximately 2.5 million by 2030, in line with national reform goals.
With demand for higher education across the Middle East increasing, universities will need to support larger cohorts of students with more varied needs. Those institutions that continue to rely on legacy university systems and outdated administrative processes may find it more challenging to scale efficiently or deliver the personalised, digital-first experiences today's learners increasingly expect.
Yamen Doughan, Senior Principal Enterprise Architect at Ellucian, explores the hidden costs of standing still and the opportunities modernisation offers universities across the Middle East.
Why Familiar Technology Limits Higher Education
Legacy systems can feel comfortable, familiar, and embedded in the day-to-day operations of an institution. Many universities see them as a low-cost choice as they have already invested in the technology, staff know how to use it, and customisations or manual workarounds are accepted as part of routine operations.
Data is often held locally in these institutions and different departments have their own ways of working. This may provide a sense of control, but it masks hidden constraints as inefficient processes and fragmented information can prevent growth and innovation in a higher education sector that is moving fast.
These pressures rarely appear all at once. They emerge at key points in the academic year, affecting core functions such as admissions, student support, finance, and strategic planning, undermining an institution's ability to respond to change.
Legacy University Systems: What Are the Risks?
Even seemingly efficient legacy student information systems (SIS) can eventually cause information bottlenecks and operational challenges as they are pushed to their limits, quietly eroding student outcomes and limiting institutions' agility in ways that are not always immediately visible.
Hidden Financial Cost
The financial cost of running legacy technology extends far beyond software licensing fees. Highly customised systems add complexity, and the more a workflow is tailored to meet the needs of a particular staff member or department, the greater the ongoing maintenance overhead.
Departments often rely on multiple processes for the same task or ad hoc solutions to bridge gaps in aging systems, such as spreadsheets for admissions, bespoke reporting, or different ways of managing student withdrawals. These may achieve short-term goals, but demand constant attention from IT teams who quickly become consumed with patching and troubleshooting, rather than developing solutions that improve the experience of students or faculty.
Operational Inefficiency
Legacy systems can struggle to cope with high-pressure periods in the academic calendar. During enrolment, sudden spikes in activity can slow application processing times, frustrating prospective students and potentially reducing enrolment numbers. This can have a noticeable impact on revenue.
Busy assessment periods reveal further limitations as staff relying on outdated processes are unable to share information easily or collate essential data to award degrees. These inefficiencies can lead directly to poor student satisfaction and wasted costs due to the additional hours staff have to spend gathering information and correcting errors.
Challenges Attracting and Retaining Quality Staff
Outdated systems can be frustrating for staff and divert them away from the rewarding aspects of their work, helping students to achieve their personal and academic goals. Staff want to contribute to the success of their institution and develop professionally, so delaying IT upgrades can increase the likelihood that experienced staff will move on and attracting new, ambitious talent becomes more difficult.
Legacy technology is an operational burden, but also a risk to resources as high-performing staff lose motivation to spend their time maintaining obsolete systems. This can lead to higher staff turnover, which means knowledge can be lost, projects are disrupted, and continuity suffers.
Modernising systems should therefore be regarded as part of a university’s talent retention strategy as it demonstrates that staff development is valued and teams can focus on meaningful work that strengthens the institution’s long-term capability and resilience.
Strategic and Reputational Constraints
Middle Eastern institutions are expected to align with national higher education digital transformation agendas, scale enrolment rapidly, launch new programmes efficiently, and develop partnerships and accreditations that build their reputation as global leaders in higher education.
Tied to inflexible legacy systems, universities risk falling short on achieving these strategic priorities. Introducing courses in emerging fields such as AI is likely to be slower and more resource intensive, which may give those institutions able to launch these courses more quickly a significant competitive edge.
Inability to Adapt
Demand for hybrid, online, and skills-based learning is rising in the region, especially among working professionals looking to continually develop in their careers.
Institutions reliant on legacy technology may struggle to develop new course offerings such as lifelong learning programmes and micro-credentials, or scale up to meet changing demand from employers to recruit students with these skills.
Exposure to Security and Compliance Risks
Universities have to take full responsibility for the security and compliance of legacy technology and extensive customisations make this more challenging. Each update or patch requires testing and bespoke adjustments may be needed to avoid disrupting existing workflows.
Data stored across multiple systems or in non-standard formats can cause delays and leave institutions exposed, increasing the risk of cyberattacks, breaches, or regulatory violations.
As universities in the Middle East rise to the challenge of meeting the region’s ambitious higher education targets for expansion and innovation, many are exploring digital transformation as a way to ensure their systems are more resilient and adaptable.
Moving to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model can offer a safer, more reliable solution for the future.
SaaS: A More Sustainable Operating Model
For many institutions, shifting to a SaaS operating model is an important part of the modernisation journey. Rather than maintaining complex on-premises systems, universities operate on a cloud-based platform that is continuously updated, secure, and scalable by design.
This shift is not just technical. It changes how institutions operate. Systems become integrated rather than fragmented. Data becomes unified rather than siloed. Updates are delivered regularly without large-scale upgrade projects. IT teams can redirect their focus from maintenance to innovation and strategic enablement.
A SaaS-based student information system simplifies workflows, improves visibility across faculties, and provides leaders with real-time insight into enrolment, finance, and academic performance. It supports growth without requiring institutions to continuously expand infrastructure or absorb the risks of managing complex customisations.
Across the Middle East, universities are increasingly viewing SaaS as a foundation for agility, resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
Institutions like the University of Kalba, Sharjah Maritime Academy, the University of Al Dhaid, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, the American University in Dubai, The University of KhorFakkan, RAK Medical & Health Sciences University, and more, have already made the decision to switch to our Ellucian Student SaaS solution. Many other universities in region are also considering making the move.
The Foundations for the Future of Higher Education
Universities can strengthen the core capabilities that underpin efficient operations and strategic agility with SaaS.
- Connected operations: Integrated processes and shared data across faculties reduces friction, improves coordination, and enables staff to focus on improving student outcomes.
- Insight-led decision-making: Timely, trusted data and advanced analytics enable institutions to monitor operational efficiency, student success, and programme effectiveness, supporting informed decision-making.
- Scalability: Flexible digital foundations allow universities to respond to fluctuating demand, regulatory change, and new programme requirements without destabilising core services.
- Experience-centred delivery: Consistent, streamlined services reduce administrative burden and improve the experience of students and staff.
- Secure and resilient: Strong governance, embedded security, and operational resilience protect institutional continuity and trust.
- End-to-end visibility of student journey: Complete oversight across the student lifecycle supports better reporting, compliance, and informed intervention.
SaaS solutions such as Ellucian Student are designed to support these capabilities, helping universities to integrate data, streamline their operations, and respond efficiently to evolving demands.
Modernisation: A Leadership Decision
The decision to move away from legacy systems is not primarily a technology upgrade. It is a leadership decision about the kind of institution a university intends to become.
Standing still is not neutral. As student expectations evolve, enrolments grow, and national transformation agendas accelerate, the cost of inaction compounds. Operational inefficiencies deepen, strategic initiatives slow, and the ability to attract and retain skilled talent diminishes.
Modernisation should therefore be approached deliberately and strategically. Leaders must look beyond immediate disruption and focus on long-term institutional resilience. This means assessing not only system functionality, but scalability, integration, security, and the capacity to support new academic models such as lifelong learning, micro-credentials, and AI-enabled services.
Successful transformation requires executive sponsorship, clear governance, and a commitment to simplifying processes rather than replicating outdated complexity in a new environment. Institutions that approach modernisation with clarity and discipline position themselves to innovate faster, respond to change with confidence, and compete effectively in an increasingly dynamic higher education landscape.
The question is no longer whether systems will need to evolve, but if institutions will lead change or reactively respond to it.
Find out more about the benefits of moving to Ellucian Student SaaS and how a fully integrated SIS can help institutions across the Middle East to unlock efficiency, innovation, and growth.
