Staff, faculty and students at Maine’s community colleges are sharply criticizing the rollout of a new information software program that has delayed financial aid awards and caused widespread problems with course registration, transcripts and housing.

“Our staff are breaking under the weight of a system that takes 10 to 15 minutes to perform what used to be a five-second task,” members of a faculty union wrote in a recent letter.

The transition to the new program Anthology was motivated by a desire for greater data security, the ability to accommodate both traditional students and those doing short-term workforce courses, and a hope for a single system across seven colleges, according to David Daigler, president of the Maine Community College System.

But eight long-serving staff members in leadership roles across multiple campuses — each of whom asked not to be identified because they feared retribution — told the Portland Press Herald that issues with the program have caused unprecedented levels of stress and are leading some employees to quit or take early retirement.

They worry that the transition is impacting their ability to provide quality student services and damaging institutional credibility, especially in light of the fact that Anthology has been the subject of lawsuits and failed implementations in other states.

“I think what’s really beating people down is that none of us believe that this product can ever be made to work correctly,” said one employee.

In an interview this week, Daigler said the Anthology rollout has gone “certainly not as desired” and acknowledged that it has taken longer and been more expensive than he had hoped. The system has spent $15.6 million to date on the implementation, about $1.6 million over budget.

Daigler also recognized the low staff morale, but said he remained confident the product will be functional in the long term.

“I’m not prepared to call it a success, but I’m certain that we’re making more progress, and we have more wins than losses on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “It is improving every day … it is not improving at the pace that I think we need it to improve upon.”

‘NOTHING WORKS AS PROMISED’

The Maine Community College System has more than 16,000 students enrolled this fall across seven colleges and employs 1,500 people. 

Three years ago, the system selected Anthology ahead of other competitors who submitted bids and described the program as offering “the most mature cloud-native platform.” A steering committee also noted it had the highest implementation cost but the lowest ongoing licensing costs of the options they considered, for a total of about $21 million over 11 years.

Anthology was optimistically slated to go live across the system last summer but was delayed until winter break and then again to March after staff said the program wasn’t ready.

At more than one campus, financial aid letters were held up for months. That meant the due date for bills had to be pushed.

Other problems arose, too. Staff said the new system has frequently miscalculated student GPAs, hasn’t included all of their courses on their transcript, struggles to create accurate degree audits, and can’t generate necessary reports for the National Student Clearinghouse, the agency that provides data to student loan companies.

Tasks like changing a student’s major can take five different administrators to resolve. Checks to outside vendors, for things like trash collection services and interpreters, also have been delayed and have caused interruptions in those services, they said.

Fall classes began two weeks ago, and students have also experienced frustrations. Southern Maine Community College student Colin Cieniawski said he registered for several courses which then appeared on his schedule, but when he showed up for class, he learned he wasn’t actually in them.

“Last year, even as a freshman, my first year in college, it felt like a lot smoother transition into my classes than it did this year,” he said.

Staff say they have been buried in hundreds of emails and voicemails from students with issues, and that IT support staff are swamped with help tickets.

Long-time employees, including some who have been in their roles since before the last software transition, or who experienced transitions at other colleges, worry the issues aren’t temporary.

“These are problems that are organic to Anthology,” said one employee. “Everything is so manual, and nothing works as promised.” 

Staff members say they still rely heavily on the old program, or on doing processes manually in an Excel spreadsheet or with a pencil and paper, in order to complete daily tasks.

“If we all had a product that was going to function at the end of however long it took us to implement, we would be doing whatever work needed to be done,” said another, who noted that Anthology had created an unmanageable backlog of students needing support.

‘I THINK WE’LL GET THERE’

Employees across campuses have been expressing their concerns about the rollout to system leadership for months.

A June 30 letter from Kennebec Valley Community College staff details issues with Anthology including errors in student records, processing delays and failure of automated functions. They asked the board to do a thorough review of the system’s functionality.

The union representing adjunct faculty took a 40-3 vote of no confidence in Anthology in August. That group also drafted a letter laying out their concerns, which they plan to deliver to the Board of Trustees at its Sept. 24 meeting. 

“The damage this deeply flawed platform has inflicted upon our students, our colleagues, and our own ability to teach and advise is staggering — and growing worse by the day,” that letter reads.

Across several colleges, staff said they had seen colleagues either quit or retire early, specifically because of the troubled transition to Anthology. Some staff interviewed by the Press Herald said they had been submitting job applications elsewhere.

Daigler said he understands people are frustrated and just want the best for students. To that end, the system worked with an outside consultant, CampusWorks, this summer to seek “external validation” that the product is functional and has worked at other institutions. Daigler said that review concluded Anthology can work.

That report also noted that the user experience is a “significant and persistent challenge,” and that “basic functions were still challenging months after go-live” at other institutions.

“I think we’ll get there,” Daigler said. “I am actually more confident now than I was four months ago.”

However, he said the feedback he has gotten from staff on that assessment is that it doesn’t reflect their experiences. Staff who spoke with the Press Herald agreed.

PROBLEMS ELSEWHERE

Other higher education institutions have lodged complaints about the Anthology software and some have even filed lawsuits against the company, which was founded in 2020 with the merging of three campus technology firms.

Rouge Community College in Oregon received an $850,000 settlement from the company in 2022 after the product was unable to process financial aid, registration or records. Another Oregon community college spent $3 million that same year to replace Anthology after the implementation resulted in students receiving inaccurate information about registration and financial aid.

Adrian College in Michigan sued the company in 2022 for fraud and breach of contract, alleging that it overpromised on the product’s ability to handle the school’s operations.

“None of the representations Anthology made about the quality, capabilities, or prior successful implementations of the product were true,” Adrian College wrote in its lawsuit.

The school and company reached an undisclosed settlement that July. A college spokesperson declined to comment on the suit.

Anthology also faces an ongoing lawsuit from Wisconsin-based Lakeshore Technical College, which alleges similar concerns and describes the product implementation as an “abject failure.”

“More than twenty-six months after contracting, Lakeshore remains on its legacy system with more than 450 open issues that Anthology is unable to resolve,” an amended complaint filed last month reads. “Moreover, Anthology is unable to credibly identify a path forward to satisfy the empty promises that it so readily made during the sales process.”

That case is set to go to trial in October of 2026. Anthology filed a motion to dismiss the suit last week.

Prior to those complaints, Anthology responded to a question in its 2021 proposal to the Maine system about any recent lawsuits or settlements by writing that it had no litigation from the past five years, “that is material to its financial position or its ability to fulfill any of Anthology’s current or future obligations.”

Daigler said Anthology has answered questions about with integrity, took accountability for problems in early conversations, and said the root of many of the issues at other colleges is that they weren’t ready to work with a system that complex. He said the recent CampusWorks assessment affirmed for him that it can work.

The system president also said he meets frequently with senior leaders at Anthology and called the company “a good business partner,” but said it needs to “step up its commitments” and work at a faster pace.

A spokesperson for Anthology said the company is a top solution in the student information space and that it has “completed more successful implementations than any other provider in the past few years.”

“We also don’t comment on specific client engagements. Each implementation is shaped by unique institutional factors,” Senior Director of Global Communications Erin Mitchell said in an emailed statement. “Anthology remains committed to seeing every project through to a successful launch.”

OUTSOURCED HELP

Before it contracted with Anthology to create a new student information system, the Maine Community College System signed an agreement in 2021 with local cyber security consultant Deer Brook to oversee the selection process and ultimately support its implementation. 

That agreement included contracting Deer Brook’s president, Ande Smith, to be the system’s temporary Chief Information Officer. Smith held that same position for the state of Maine from 2018 to 2019.

Daigler said that isn’t uncommon; higher education institutions sometimes outsource that kind of role, “because the technical fluency has to be so high and so current.”

“You go to the outside market and you bring somebody in, and we were looking for resources that could help support network administration, data security,” he said.

Staff, however, said they are concerned about the arrangement and believe having Deer Brook as a middle man in the process has sometimes been a hindrance. They’re also worried about the high cost of paying contractors to handle aspects of the transition.

The system has been employing temporary workers from Deer Brook to fill gaps during the transition, in positions ranging from $65 an hour for a communications specialist to $250 an hour for architect for the Microsoft program Dynamics 365, according to the latest contract extension obtained through a public records request.

For the 2025-2026 year, Smith will make $220,000 before transitioning out of the role, according to an Aug. 5 contract.

In total, the system has paid Deer Brook about $6.7 million to date, which includes the Anthology implementation, Smith’s salary and other IT services.

Daigler said the support has been critical because of the complexity of the product, and said he’s increasing Deer Brook’s support in areas like financial aid that need extra hands. He said there are about a dozen contractors deployed across the college at the moment.

Overall, he said the key to solving the staff morale issues will be to fix ongoing problems and getting to a point where they can experience a functional product.

“We have to get people where they understand, ‘Oh, now I know how to use it. Now I can make it work’ and that belief system will come back,” Daigler said. “In my opinion, the belief system will come back fairly quickly, the anger won’t go away quite so quick.”

Staff remain concerned that the product is inherently flawed.

“This isn’t a case of people not being able to cope with change,” one long-time employee said. “This is really a case of people warning, setting off alarm bells, saying we’re going to have problems here.”