The Cost of Missing Common Higher Ed Scenarios

In the world of higher education IT, few things are more frustrating than realizing your newly selected Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform can’t meet a business requirement that should’ve been basic.

That’s exactly what happened to a large organization that recently deployed an IAM solution from a well-known vendor—only to discover that it couldn’t handle a common, highly impactful use case: providing early, limited access to faculty prior to their official hire date.

The Use Case: Early Access for Teaching Preparation

In higher education, it is often standard practice for institutions to give incoming faculty limited access to a small subset of systems—particularly the Learning Management System (LMS) or ERP purchasing system—so they can begin preparing for the courses they’ll teach. This access often needs to be granted weeks before the employee’s formal start date.

At the same time, institutions must carefully control risks. If a faculty member does not complete onboarding processes—especially HR compliance steps like the I-9 verification or background check—their access must be automatically revoked to avoid unauthorized system usage or potential liability.

These are not exotic requirements. They’re routine business processes in colleges and universities across the country.

The Problem: Custom Coding to Fill Gaps

Unfortunately, the IAM product selected by this organization lacked the flexibility to support early access provisioning tied to conditional workflows like I-9 verification or background check. The system couldn’t:

• Provision faculty access prior to official start date based on hire intent
• Limit that early access to only specific systems (e.g., LMS, email)
• Automatically revoke access if HR business processes weren’t completed
• Distinguish between faculty granted temporary early access and those with full, active employment-based access

As a result, not only did the organization need to build a custom bolt-on application to handle this scenario, but they also had no reliable way to track which faculty had temporary, conditional access versus full, confirmed access. This lack of differentiation created technical and audit headaches, compliance concerns, and confusion for both IT administrators and data owners.

Rather than solving the problem natively, the institution was forced to build a workaround that required ongoing maintenance and staff expertise to keep the customization running. This kind of workaround undermines the entire value proposition of IAM. If your IAM platform can’t flex to accommodate real-world workflows, you’re not automating identity governance—you’re patching holes.

Fischer Identity: Purpose-Built for Scenarios Like This

This is exactly where Fischer Identity separates itself from the crowd. We’ve worked with hundreds of higher education institutions, and we know that scenarios like early faculty access aren’t exceptions—they’re table stakes.

Fischer Identity’s platform supports this business case natively, without writing a single line of custom code. Through a configuration-only model, institutions can:

• Provision access prior to official hire date, based on data attributes like future-dated start, contract status, or onboarding milestones.
• Control which systems or entitlements are included in early access, such as restricting to LMS tools, email, or content portals.
• Tie deprovisioning logic directly to HR business process flags, like I-9 verification or onboarding task completion.
• Automatically revoke access if those HR flags are not met within a defined window—ensuring compliance and reducing risk.

No-Code Flexibility Built for Higher Ed

These are not customizations. These are standard configurations within Fischer Identity’s platform. Our policy engine allows you to define granular access rules based on any combination of identity attributes, events, and business logic—whether that’s “faculty with future start date who hasn’t completed I-9” or a “contractor with a role and no verified sponsor.”

Because we’ve been in this space for over 20 years, and because we’ve specialized in higher education from the start, these scenarios aren’t edge cases to us. They’re everyday identity governance.

The Hidden Cost of Choosing the Wrong IAM

It’s easy to focus on license costs or flashy feature sets when selecting an IAM product. But what’s the real cost of choosing a platform that doesn’t understand your business?

• Development hours sunk into building bolt-ons
• Risk exposure from incomplete deprovisioning
• Staff frustration managing exceptions and complexities manually
• Increased audit scrutiny from ad-hoc processes

Worse, these gaps erode trust in your IAM program and slow your ability to adapt to new demands.

Fischer Identity: The Right Choice for Higher Education

With Fischer Identity, you get a platform that is:

• Purpose-built for the complexity of higher ed
• No-code configurable—adapts to your needs without scripting
• Designed for full lifecycle governance, including early and conditional access
• Proven in the field, with a 97% customer retention rate and a 99% implementation success rate

We don’t just say we understand higher education—we’ve proven it at universities, regional and community colleges, medical centers, and other verticals alike.

So, before you settle for an IAM platform that can’t meet your core business needs, ask this:

Why bolt-on what should come built-in?

If you’re facing scenarios like early faculty access—or any other higher ed-specific identity challenge—Fischer Identity is ready to help.

Connect with our team to schedule a demo tailored to your institution’s real needs.