🎓Education

University SharePoint Student & Faculty Portal: 40,000-User Academic Environment

A major state university with 40,000 students and 4,000 faculty members relied on a decade-old SharePoint 2013 on-premises intranet with unmanageable nested sites, broken links, and department silos. Faculty stored course materials in personal OneDrive folders with no standardization, students had no central portal, and the university faced FERPA compliance exposure: student records stored in general libraries accessible to non-authorized staff with no audit trail.

University SharePoint Student & Faculty Portal: 40,000-User Academic Environment - Education case study by SharePoint Support
40,000
Students Onboarded
847 → 124
Legacy Sites Reduced
60
Forms Digitized
78%
IT Support Tickets Reduced

The Challenge

A major state university with 40,000 students and 4,000 faculty members relied on a decade-old SharePoint 2013 on-premises intranet with unmanageable nested sites, broken links, and department silos. Faculty stored course materials in personal OneDrive folders with no standardization, students had no central portal, and the university faced FERPA compliance exposure: student records stored in general libraries accessible to non-authorized staff with no audit trail.

Our Solution

EPC Group designed a modern SharePoint Online environment purpose-built for higher education, migrating 2.8 million documents from 847 legacy sites to a structured hub site architecture. A five-hub model was deployed: University Hub, Academic Affairs Hub, Student Services Hub, Administrative Hub, and Research Hub. FERPA compliance was addressed with isolated site collections for student records, sensitivity labels auto-applied via content type, and DLP policies blocking external sharing of student PII. Faculty course collaboration was built on Teams + SharePoint, with each course section receiving a Teams team and connected SharePoint site. Sixty administrative PDF forms were replaced with Power Apps digital workflows.

Key Results

40,000 students onboarded
96% portal adoption in 30 days
Zero FERPA audit findings
$380K/year infrastructure savings
"Our first FERPA compliance audit after the migration came back with zero findings. The previous audit had three. That result alone justified the entire investment."
Chief Information Officer
State University

Project Overview

A major state university with 40,000 students and 4,000 faculty needed to migrate from SharePoint 2013 on-premises to a modern Microsoft 365 environment while achieving FERPA compliance and improving the faculty and student experience.

The Challenge

Legacy SharePoint 2013 had grown into 847 sites with no governance. Student records were accessible to non-authorized staff. Faculty stored course materials in personal OneDrive accounts. IT spent 30% of support tickets just on SharePoint access issues.

Solution Highlights

FERPA-Compliant Architecture: Student record libraries isolated in dedicated site collections. Sensitivity labels ("Student PII — FERPA Protected") auto-applied via content type. DLP policies block external sharing.

Five-Hub Site Structure: University Hub → Academic Affairs Hub → Student Services Hub → Administrative Hub → Research Hub. Each with audience-targeted content.

Course Collaboration Model: Each course section: Teams team + SharePoint site. Course materials accessible via Teams Files tab. Gradebook sync via Power Automate.

Digital Forms: 60 PDF forms converted to Power Apps digital workflows. Course approval cycle reduced from 14 days to 3 days.

Results

- 96% of 40,000 students accessed the new portal in 30 days

  • Zero FERPA audit findings (previous audit: 3 findings)
  • 847 sites reduced to 124
  • IT support tickets for SharePoint down 78%
  • $380,000/year on-premises infrastructure savings

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