Portal Glossary

1. Global Classifications & Filters

These classifications apply across multiple views and charts throughout the portal.

Degree Types

  • 2-year: Postsecondary institutions offering programs requiring at least 2 years but less than 4 years of full-time equivalent college-level work (1,800 to 3,600 clock hours), including associate degrees, diplomas, and recognized postsecondary certificates.
  • 4-year and Above: Postsecondary institutions offering programs of at least 4 years duration or at/above the baccalaureate level. Includes graduate schools, postbaccalaureate certificate programs, and free-standing professional schools (e.g., medical, law).
  • Administrative Unit: The system office or central administrative entity overseeing a multi-campus institutional environment.
  • CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel): A public general and vocational college unique to Quebec, Canada, bridging secondary school (high school) and university or the workforce (typically 2 to 3 years duration).
  • Further Education (FE): Post-compulsory education distinct from higher education, predominantly used in the United Kingdom and common in vocational and adult education systems.
  • Less than 2 years: Short-term, career-focused postsecondary institutions offering sub-baccalaureate programs under 1,800 clock hours (diplomas, certificates, and occupational credentials).
  • Sixth Form College: Educational institutions primarily in the United Kingdom catering to students aged 16 to 18 completing advanced-level qualifications (e.g., A-levels) prior to university entry.

School District Classifications (K–12)

  • Alternative School District: Districts operating specialized academic programs with flexible scheduling, non-traditional instruction, and targeted support environments.
  • Charter School District: Publicly funded educational entities operating independently of standard geographic school districts under tailored educational charters.
  • School District (Standard): A geographical administrative jurisdiction within which local governments or elected boards oversee, govern, and operate public schools.
  • Separate School District: A constitutionally or statutorily recognized Canadian district structure (e.g., Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Northern territories) providing public education within an explicit Roman Catholic or Protestant confessional framework.

Institution Types

  • Private: Educational institutions governed by private individuals or nongovernmental bodies, funded primarily by non-public sources, and operated by non-elected officials (either for-profit or not-for-profit).
  • Private For-Profit: Private institutions operated by an individual or commercial entity that distributes earnings, compensation, or financial return based on operational risk.
  • Private Not-For-Profit: Private institutions operated by entities that do not distribute net profits to private shareholders (includes independent and religiously affiliated schools).
  • Public: Institutions governed, operated, and maintained by public school officials and funded predominantly through public appropriations and revenues.

World Regions

The portal classifies institutions across seven geographical zones:

  • Africa: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini (Swaziland), Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Réunion, Rwanda, Saint Helena, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
  • Asia: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Borneo, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macao, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
  • Europe: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Svalbard, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
  • North America: Canada and USA (including Puerto Rico).
  • Latin America: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saba, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Venezuela.
  • Middle East: Bahrein, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
  • Oceania:American Samoa, Australia, Christmas Island, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

2. Portal Pages & Visualizations

Trends Page

Charts

  • Active Systems by Institution Enrollment: A box-and-whisker plot displaying the institutional size distribution (enrollment) for client bases using a given product, accompanied by the total client count.
  • Adoption Curve: A trajectory graph that plots total active institutions against annual implementations (new and upgrades) to illustrate market saturation, showing whether a segment is actively expanding or driven by replacements.
  • Average Age per Product: A comparative bar chart illustrating solution longevity, measured by the mean active operational years since deployment.
  • Competitive Compass: A quadrant model evaluating vendors across two axes: market adoption (total active implementations) and 5-year momentum (new implementations since the baseline cutoff):
    • Proven & Growing: High total adoption and high recent momentum (category leaders).
    • On the Rise: Lower total adoption paired with fast recent growth (disruptors and emerging platforms).
    • Legacy Anchors: Substantial legacy customer bases with decelerating modern implementations.
    • Early-Stage / Specialized: Niche solutions, regional entrants, or specialized tools with bounded volume.
  • Contract Pricing: A box-and-whisker visualization evaluating procurement cost benchmarks by contrasting median contract ranges from the most recent 5-year window against the preceding 5-year period.
  • Current Market Share: Bar chart depicting active products controlling over 1% market share based on implementation counts; smaller solutions aggregate into Others.
  • Current Market Share by Enrollment Bands: A horizontal bar visualization breaking down active product shares (>1%) across small, medium, and large institutional size tiers.
  • Decommissions: A chord diagram mapping displacement paths between systems. Band arcs indicate relative volume and migration trajectories from sunsetted solutions to incoming replacements.
  • Historical Market Share (Enrollment): Longitudinal tabular analysis of market distribution calculated from aggregated student headcount enrolled at client institutions.
  • Historical Market Share (Implementations): A 10-year line graph tracing comparative product adoption trajectories using total institutional installations.
  • Implementation Time: A horizontal box-and-whisker metric tracking timeline durations across procurement phases: RFP to Purchase, Purchase to Implementation, and complete RFP to Implementation.
  • Include Upgrades (Toggle for Competitive Compass): Governs whether intrasuite platform modernizations (retaining the same corporate vendor while switching product lines) count alongside third-party vendor conversions.
  • Local vs. Cloud Hosting: Longitudinal area graph depicting hosting infrastructure splits (on-premises/local hardware versus cloud platforms) for new deployments across the past decade.
  • New Implementations: An area graph demonstrating net adoption velocity by year (excluding version-only upgrades), accompanied by the supporting sample size count.
  • RFP Trends: A bar chart displaying the volume of Requests for Proposals (RFPs) segmented by quarter and year, highlighting seasonal procurement cycles and year-over-year activity shifts.

Product Comparison Page

The product comparison layout groups evaluation metrics into logical operational categories:

Product Overview

  • Company Website: Direct operational URL linking to the parent organization’s portal.
  • Name of the Product (Company): Identifies the official system name together with its owning corporate entity.

Client Profile

  • Average Institution Tenure: The mean duration (in years) an institution retains a product before transitioning to another platform.
  • Client Composition: Distribution ratio of an application’s user base between Higher Education campuses and K–12 School Districts.
  • Global Adoption Status: Total distinct sovereign countries actively running the evaluated software.
  • Institution Level: Granular enrollment breakdown across sub-2-year, 2-year, and 4-year+ postsecondary segments.
  • System Overlap Rate: The proportion of customer institutions simultaneously running an additional system in the same product category.
  • Total Active Implementations: Total baseline volume of active operational installations in the selected segment.

Implementation Statistics

  • Recent Decommissions (Excl. Closures): Voluntary customer departures or cancellations within the trailing 24 months (excluding institutional mergers or shuttered campuses).
  • Recent Implementations w/ Upgrades: Total new customer acquisitions combined with major intra-suite upgrades completed within the trailing 24-month window.
  • Recent Implementations w/o Upgrades: Net-new client deployments onboarded from competing vendors or manual processes within the trailing 24 months.

Vendor Stability & Market Presence

  • Client Base Diversity: Assessment of vendor revenue reliance on statewide frameworks or consortia versus an independently distributed customer footprint.
  • Company Recent M&A Activity: Tracker indicating institutional ownership changes, private equity transitions, or corporate mergers occurring within the trailing 24 months.
  • End-of-Life Announcements: Confirms if official phase-out, sunsetting, or core maintenance cessation schedules have been issued for a solution.
  • Product-to-Product Migration: Net comparative transition index between two selected systems (positive score indicates net migration toward the product; negative indicates net attrition to the competitor).
  • Vendor Churn Rate: The trailing two-year institutional attrition percentage.

Network Page

  • Communities: Clustered product classifications based on institutional capability groupings:
    • Enterprise Systems: Administrative infrastructure (e.g., SIS, ERP, CRM, Finance, HR).
    • Instructional Systems: Pedagogical solutions (e.g., LMS, assessment, video/conferencing, ePortfolio).
  • Degree: Top-level structural filter switching network views between Higher Education and K–12 School Districts.
  • Nodes: Circular visual elements representing distinct software solutions; hover interactions display active installation totals under the active filter profile.

Peers Page

  • Peer Institutions: Peer institutions are institutions that are selected to be used for comparative analysis and benchmarking of institutional qualities. Peers usually have common qualities such as level of resources, student headcount, and institutional goals. Source: University of Arkansas – Little Rock
  • Technology Stack (Tech Stack): Technology stack—or institutional technological infrastructure—refers to the various systems and applications required to manage and deliver higher education. The exact layout of systems can vary greatly among institutions, depending on the size and purpose of the organization. Nonetheless, successful institutions maintain a similar and consistent layout—which you’ll learn below. Source: ModernCampus.com

3. Institution Data Dictionary

Alphabetical listing of core institution profile attributes:

  • City: The municipality in which the main institutional campus resides.
  • Country: The sovereign country where the institution is based.
  • Current Enrollment Total: Total unduplicated student headcount, regardless of enrollment status (full-time or part-time).
  • Current Enrollment Year: The effective baseline reporting year for the stated total enrollment figure.
  • Defunct on Year: The calendar year in which the institution ceased academic and administrative operations.
  • Description: A standard biographical narrative describing the institution.
  • Parent Institution: The governing entity that consolidates and submits centralized administrative data for affiliated branch campuses.
  • Region: Subnational jurisdiction where the institution is situated (e.g., state in the U.S., province/territory in Canada, county in the U.K.).
  • Report Under Parent: Boolean indicator (True/False) signifying whether enrollment metrics roll up into a parent governing campus.
  • Statewide System: Multi-campus administrative governance bodies operating under a shared state charter.
  • UNITID / Institutional ID: Official national reporting registry identifier (e.g., IPEDS/NCES in the United States, UKPRN in the United Kingdom).
  • Website: The verified primary URL of the institution.
  • Year Founded: The historical year in which the educational institution was chartered or established.