Ellucian Colleague vs. PowerSchool Student Information System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Ellucian Colleague
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Ellucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.N/A
PowerSchool SIS
Score 7.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
The PowerSchool Student Information System covers administrative needs, such as scheduling, attendance, reporting, data management, faculty management, emergency/medical and health management, registration, and more for K-12 schools and districts. It is easy to use and boasts an industry-leading gradebook, PowerTeacher Pro. Users enjoy a fully web-based SIS that is flexible, configurable, and scalable with real-time updates on any operating system, browser or device.N/A
Pricing
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool SIS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Features
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Student and Faculty Administration
Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Product A and Product B
Ellucian Colleague
7.8
4 Ratings
5% below category average
PowerSchool Student Information System
8.5
3 Ratings
4% above category average
Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.54 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Online Registration Management7.53 Ratings10.02 Ratings
District Communications, such as messaging and alerting7.03 Ratings8.12 Ratings
Roster Management8.03 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Platform Customization8.04 Ratings7.73 Ratings
Teacher Self-Service8.03 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Student Data Security8.04 Ratings9.43 Ratings
Community Support7.53 Ratings7.43 Ratings
Class Scheduling8.04 Ratings9.43 Ratings
State and National-level Reporting8.04 Ratings7.12 Ratings
Compliance Support8.04 Ratings7.62 Ratings
Teacher and Parent Mobile Application8.03 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Likelihood to Recommend
7.3
(13 ratings)
9.0
(32 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.5
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(12 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Ellucian ColleaguePowerSchool Student Information System
Likelihood to Recommend
Ellucian
Ellucian Colleague is wonderful at streamlining processes and unifying data related to students, finance, human resources, and financial aid. It continues to support and manage administrative needs, enhance student experiences, and improve operational efficiency across the University. Ellucian Colleague is less suited for quick data retrieval and comprehensive financial reporting. These functions could use some improvement to optimize the user experience.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
PowerSchool Student Information System is a cool software that can be highly recommended to anyone who is living in the educational management space. It is proven that this software can reduce your manual workload massively if you use it right. Plus it is really worth the price you pay. Especially if you are in the administrative field, this software will help you to minimize manual efforts put into student registrations, staffing recruitment, and main resource management processes.
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Pros
Ellucian
  • Colleague Student allows us to integrate services across the university for students with staff in various departments able to see the information about a student that they need to serve the student well.
  • Colleague Student makes it easy to see our students current academic record as well as transfer courses (and information) and their past records here at the university. Our old system required a lot of homegrown connection points to be able to see all of this information. It was neither quick nor easy.
  • Colleague Student makes the registration process for our students much easier. Our old system was clunky and would often prevent students from registering for a class but not provide information for them about why. Colleague Student makes it easy for students to see if they are missing a pre-requisite, have a hold, etc., so they can know how to get their registration back on track.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
  • PowerSchool houses student or staff information that can be easily accessed by those teachers and administrators who need the information. This allows everyone to go to one place to access information.
  • Parents can view their child's grades at any time with their protected login on a parent portal. This allows teachers to keep parents informed and involved in their child's progress at school. When everyone works together it increases our students' chance for success.
  • PowerSchool offers videos to train new users. When we have new employees, the videos can be accessed at any time the employee needs as opposed to them waiting for someone to help them.
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Cons
Ellucian
  • Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
  • Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
  • Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
  • Does not consistently communicate with related software such as Illuminate for Special Education Students.
  • Drop down menus frequently refresh as data is entered which slows down the user's ability to enter information.
  • Icons are sometimes unclear and not easily understandable. Word labels for some items might be more effective.
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Likelihood to Renew
Ellucian
No answers on this topic
PowerSchool Group LLC
We would be starting over at square one if we did not continue our PowerSchool subscription. We do not have a program in a place that would take its place.
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Usability
Ellucian
For decades, Ellucian Colleague has served the University as our primary student record-retention CRM. Its functionality has weathered many recent trends in CRM development and continues to produce the needed results for our constituency and the size of our university. We look forward to continuing to utilize Ellucian Colleague in the future.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
Great features, but it can feel very cumbersome at times
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Support Rating
Ellucian
No answers on this topic
PowerSchool Group LLC
Overall, I have not had to use support for PowerSchool Student Information System because our school district gives us training in each area in which we will be utilizing PowerSchool Student Information System. In terms of in-user support, I feel that there is mild to moderate user support that is built into PowerSchool SIS.
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Alternatives Considered
Ellucian
I did not use Jenzabar as extensively as Colleague, but they perform similar functions for student information tracking. I think Colleague is more appropriate for use across campus, as its student billing and scheduling options exceed Jenzabar. Jenzabar, however, offers better tools for use exclusively in student affairs. If an organization wants to track all student data, they should consider Colleague.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
I have heard good things for Infinite Campus and Skyward. I would [evaluate] each of them and see what fits your needs. Each has their strengths and weaknesses and so picking the right one for your needs is important. PowerSchool [Student Information System] does have some great features, but lacks some fundamental reports and functions to make it top notch.
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Return on Investment
Ellucian
  • By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
  • Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
  • Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
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PowerSchool Group LLC
  • It has created shortcuts for all staff members, saving us time.
  • In creating shortcuts and combining many different systems into one, it is saving our school money.
  • It has created a safety net for teachers because grades and student information is stored electronically, which means teachers not having to worry about losing or misplacing their grade books.
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ScreenShots

PowerSchool SIS Screenshots

Screenshot of Student attendanceScreenshot of Standards-based gradingScreenshot of At-risk dashboardScreenshot of Parent view of student schedule