A Corporate Perspective on the EDUCAUSE 2025 Top 10: Jenzabar

Which one or two of the EDUCAUSE 2025 Top 10 issues are going to be most relevant to Jenzabar, and why?

The main solutions offered by Jenzabar are enterprise resource planning (ERP) and student information systems (SIS), upon which other functional modules can be added. So, the two areas of the EDUCAUSE 2025 Top 10 issues that are most relevant for us are #1, The Data-Empowered Institution, and #2, Administrative Simplification. At Jenzabar, we want to know how we can enable institutions to make better use of their data and how we can help campuses modernize and streamline their processes.

The description for issue #1, The Data-Empowered Institution, concerns using data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to increase student success, win the enrollment race, increase research funds, and reduce inefficiencies. That's broad, but a lot of people look to a student information system to do these kinds of things. At Jenzabar, our research has found that most institutions admit they need to use data better to make strategic decisions, but they don't have the infrastructure to do so. That falls squarely on us in many cases, so we're working hard to ensure our customers have the means to leverage their data fully.

We're partners with our customers. They often express the problems they are having, and, for many of them, we infer that better, smarter, and more accessible analytics would solve some of those issues. The need for data is a theme we hear from higher education institutions. Colleges and universities are increasingly using platforms from different vendors. To gain insights into the success of a program, or their institution in general, they need to combine data from myriad systems. For many institutions, being able to do that is alchemy. As such, integration is a core focus area for us.

Another focal point for Jenzabar is enabling departments within a college or university to have access to relevant data at their fingertips without having to write to the IT department and without IT staff members having to figure out different table structures, build queries, put them into a data lake, etc. Accessibility is a big problem. Data and making sure people are trained to interpret data are big challenges for many institutions, so we are focusing on accessibility and interoperability.

Another theme that we at Jenzabar have seen throughout higher education is that people are being asked to do more with less. There are a lot of reorganizations, mergers, and even closings happening. Being more efficient and simplifying processes is something that higher education institutions—when compared to other industries—are not always the best at. These changes are happening rapidly enough that people are thinking and acting more proactively and assertively. We're meeting this need for proactivity with tools that we've recently rolled out. Our workflow tool automates processes, and it even automates the automation of workflows. Our communications suite enables institutions to communicate with their staff and students in a number of different ways and track those communications more systematically.

There are also a lot of promising developments around the use of generative AI—particularly related to helping people write business communications and reports more effectively. A CTO at one of our client institutions likes to say that his job is to get more administrators out of spreadsheets and in front of students. Generative AI can help staff members drastically reduce the time they spend on internal reporting and communications so that they can focus on students' needs. These benefits are in the same vein as the work we do at Jenzabar. Our focus is on helping people do the work rather than reporting on the work they need to do. We're trying to automate a lot of that and take away the more menial tasks by rolling out new, AI-powered technologies.

We have case studies that detail the dramatic changes our solutions make—especially Jenzabar Workflow, Jenzabar Communications, and Jenzabar Chatbot—that have led to time savings for staff. We also look for the intersection between "How can we improve the user or the student experience?" and "How can we save staff time and effort?" When we can develop tools that do both of those things, that's a sweet spot. Chatbot communications are a great example of this. Especially this year with FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), chatbots have been super helpful for institutions.

Our chatbot uses AI to read from a corpus of documents that the institution defines. This training enables the chatbot to provide valuable and correct responses. The chatbot is available to students at all hours, even after staff go home, which saves a lot of time and effort.

Finally, one subpoint under issue #1, The Data-Empowered Institution, is "winning the enrollment race." Winning the enrollment race has a lot to do with data, but it also has to do with providing different and more offerings. At Jenzabar, we see the enrollment race increasingly being about microcredentials and enabling stackable credits. Our nontraditional programming platform, Campus Marketplace, enables colleges and universities to provide a variety of microcredentials and partner with corporations to provide specialized training. Integrating with our flagship platform, Jenzabar One, allows those microcredits to be stacked toward a more traditional degree. We believe these kinds of offerings increase the number of entry points compared to traditional matriculation.

What challenges do you think are in store for higher education in 2025?

We recently held our Jenzabar user conference and framed it around three big challenges we are seeing. One of those challenges is the repercussions of changes in FAFSA rules and the slow or flawed rollout of those changes. As a result, many students are either not enrolling this year or enrolling much later than usual, which creates downstream issues with tuition payments and getting students enrolled, housed, etc. Another major problem this year is the so-called enrollment cliff, where there are fewer incoming students. This is the first year that the enrollment cliff is hitting a lot of states and institutions—many of which are still recovering financially from the coronavirus pandemic. The final challenges, which are related to the enrollment cliff, are the massive growth of microcredentials and the trend toward skill-based hiring among HR departments. These challenges have created a new kind of competition for higher education. These market changes all require adaptation. And again, relative to other industries, higher education has not always adapted quickly, but now I think it has to.

The number of high school graduates who attend college has been dropping since 2009. The data we've seen puts the current number at around 60 percent. Of those, a certain percentage are going to drop out of college. That number is currently around 30 percent. This means that more than 60 percent of high school graduates either don't attend college or don't complete their degrees. Many don't because the process of getting there is arduous, especially if they don't have the parental or community support that they need. But signing up for a Coursera course only takes a couple of minutes. Progressive colleges and universities recognize that. They are taking their curricula, breaking them down by modular skills, and offering those skills as certificates—as entry points—and then making sure students know they can stack those certificates and ultimately apply them toward a degree.

What opportunities do you think are in store for higher education in 2025?

There's nothing but opportunity. Generative AI and other forms of artificial intelligence have come around just in time for higher education. We have projects where we're working on natural language prompts that allow people to get the data they need, even if they don't have the technical skills to query databases. There are also communication tools or chatbot tools that use AI to better interpret and respond with recommendations. Jenzabar workflow tools are another type of AI that enable workflows and resulting communications to be automated. There is a nice confluence of external pressure to require change and the right technology to enable it. This is an opportunity for higher education teams to be far more efficient and data-driven in their decision-making. As a result, the areas where the consumer is losing confidence can be fixed by those adaptations.

Are you primarily excited or optimistic or concerned or scared about higher education in 2025?

There's a lot of opportunity for change right now in ways that can benefit students and help them get gainful employment, which is why we're all here. But change requires leaders who can move and adapt quickly to challenges. And, as I said, that's typically hard for colleges and universities. Vendors like Jenzabar are working hard to be partners with colleges and universities and help them with that kind of transition and evolution. Institutional leaders need to recognize that things are changing in a way they haven't before, and they need to adapt to it.

Overall, I'm optimistic that the necessary leadership is there and ready to tackle these challenges. I don't know about faculty, but in terms of leadership, we're seeing institutions hiring for a different skillset—one that is more adept at change management and more tech-savvy. A lot of CIOs and CTOs are joining leadership boards, and that wasn't the case in the past. I think that's a positive sign.

How do you see the Top 10 issues changing the relationship between your company and the higher education community in the future?

Jenzabar is fortunate in that I don't think much will need to change. We're a bit of a unique company; we have over 240 institutions that have been our clients for over twenty-five years, and there have been a lot of changes during the last twenty years or so. A subset of that group has been with us for over thirty years. Only through partnership can these long relationships exist; they would have left us long ago if we weren't adapting to the times alongside them. This adaptability is built into our DNA. We can always do better, and we will adjust like they will. We have a lot of case studies that showcase innovation, so colleges and universities are coming to us and asking us to partner with them. Meanwhile, we're talking with our partners and helping institutions further adapt. So, while the new challenges may be more acute, they don't change how we work with our clients.

A lot of the work in our partnerships pays off because we have a lot of referrals. We've been the most-selected SIS over the last four years. A lot of our success comes from making sure that we are thoughtful about our innovation and the problems we help our customers solve. We make sure to constantly stay in touch with our customers when we are developing those innovations. For instance, every single product team has an advisory committee that regularly meets with customers and holds office hours to make sure we hear the voice of the customer and react to the core problems they are experiencing.

Another big part of our relationships is customer service and implementation. We've won many awards in both of those areas. When an institution buys a large system like an ERP, the institution knows the system is going to touch a lot of people and processes. We understand that these are big, important decisions. At Jenzabar, we strive to earn the trust of our clients and keep that trust throughout our partnership.

Chris Morgan is Associate Vice President of Innovation at Jenzabar.