Download two free resources from Ingenuity Partners: the MCDS Playbook and MCDS Self-Assessment Pack. Designed to help Australian higher education institutions understand the MortarCAPS Data Standard, assess readiness, and build the case for adoption.

Marketing tech isn’t the problem. Poor strategy is. Discover how to unlock real ROI by connecting data, teams, and the full customer lifecycle.

The higher education sector has been crushed by IT complexity; juggling excessively complicated ecosystems and accelerating demand against limited resources, capability and budgets. Couple this with seismic technical disruption and it’s no wonder most institutions are struggling just to keep things afloat. 2026 could be the year it starts to change.

Across Australian universities, the same issue plays out year after year: endless integration projects, growing maintenance costs, and reports that never quite reconcile. Despite heavy investment in digital transformation, data still doesn’t flow cleanly across systems. But the real problem isn’t integration. It’s language.

We’re proud to announce that Version 1.0 of the MortarCAPS Higher Learning Data Standard (MCDS) is now live. This milestone represents far more than a technical achievement. For the higher education sector, it’s the release of a robust, vendor-neutral data model that simplifies interoperability, accelerates digital transformation, and unlocks more meaningful student experiences.