Updated July 2026: This article was originally published in 2015, in the Drupal 7 era. Most of the original list has since moved into Drupal core or been replaced by better tools, so we have fully rewritten it for Drupal 11, with a status check on every module we recommended back then.
Drupal remains an obvious choice for schools, universities, and online education platforms. It is a flexible content management platform built to handle large numbers of users with different permissions, empower collaboration, and organize huge volumes of content with ease.
What sets it apart from other content management systems? Beyond being open source, Drupal offers a deep reservoir of highly refined modules, the building blocks of a website, with the exact features needed to create a sophisticated, dynamic education-focused website. That is why Drupal is the CMS of choice for prestigious institutions like Georgetown, Columbia University, University of Oxford, University of Oregon, and many others.
A lot has changed since we first published this list. Views and Media are now part of Drupal core. WYSIWYG editing is handled by CKEditor 5 out of the box. Panels gave way to Layout Builder and, more recently, Drupal Canvas. So before we count down today's top 10, here is an honest look at what happened to the class of 2015.
What Happened to the 2015 List
Nine of the ten modules we recommended in 2015 have moved into core, been superseded, or faded from maintenance. Only one keeps its place.
2015 Module
Status in 2026
What to Use Instead
Views
Moved into Drupal core (since Drupal 8)
Still essential, no install needed
WYSIWYG
Obsolete
CKEditor 5, included in core
Views Slideshow
Aging; carousels now discouraged for accessibility and UX
Hero and card components built as Single Directory Components
Features
Obsolete for configuration deployment
Core Configuration Management and Drupal Recipes
Panels
Superseded
Layout Builder in core, and Drupal Canvas
Media
Moved into Drupal core
Core Media and Media Library
Display Suite
Superseded for most use cases
Layout Builder in core
Calendar
Drupal 7 era, no longer a safe bet
Smart Date with Calendar View
Insert
Obsolete
CKEditor 5 with Media Library embedding
Simplenews
Still actively maintained
Keeps its spot in the 2026 list below
The pattern is clear: Drupal absorbed its most popular contributed modules into core. What used to take ten module installs now takes far fewer, and the contributed space has shifted toward solving higher-level problems: forms, membership, search, accessibility, and AI.
Top 10 Drupal Modules for Education Sites in 2026
Selected for Drupal 10 and 11 compatibility, active maintenance, and the jobs education websites actually need to do: admissions, course catalogs, events, campus logins, and compliance.
The single most valuable contributed module for education sites. Admission applications, program inquiries, scholarship submissions, event registrations, student surveys: Webform builds them all without custom code, with conditional logic, file uploads, email handlers, and submission management your admissions office can run on its own.
Paragraphs lets editors compose rich pages from predefined, reusable content components: text, media, accordions, statistics, and calls to action. For universities with dozens of departmental editors, it keeps pages on-brand and consistent while still giving each faculty flexibility.
The modern answer to a classic campus problem: giving each school, department, research center, or course its own space with its own members and permissions. Group lets a faculty manage its section of the site without touching anyone else's, all within one Drupal installation.
The successor to the old Calendar workflow. Smart Date handles academic schedules the way institutions actually need: recurring events, durations, all-day events, and time zones, with Views integration and companion modules like Calendar View for full calendar displays of semesters, holidays, and campus events.
Students and parents judge a university site by whether they can find things. Search API with the Solr backend delivers fast, faceted, full-text search across programs, courses, news, people, and documents, with role-specific refinements for prospective students, current students, and staff.
The SEO backbone trio. Pathauto generates clean, human-readable URLs automatically; Redirect preserves link equity when pages move, critical during program restructures; and Metatag manages titles, descriptions, and social sharing cards across thousands of pages.
With ADA Title II deadlines approaching in 2027 for US public institutions and the European Accessibility Act already in force, accessibility is now a legal requirement for education sites. Editoria11y gives every content editor live, inline accessibility feedback as they write, plus site-wide issue reporting for your compliance team.
Universities live on single sign-on. The samlauth module (or the CAS module, depending on your identity provider) connects Drupal to your institutional SSO, so students, faculty, and staff log in with their campus credentials instead of yet another password.
The sole survivor from our 2015 list. Still actively maintained, Simplenews publishes and delivers newsletters to subscriber lists, a proven way for schools and universities to engage students, parents, alumni, and donors directly from the CMS.
Drupal's AI module ecosystem connects your site to the LLM provider of your choice for practical editorial wins: suggested image alt text, content summaries, translation assistance, and chatbots over your own course catalog. Used with editorial oversight, it multiplies what a small web team can maintain.
Beyond Modules: Recipes, Drupal CMS, and Canvas
In 2015, assembling these building blocks was the job. In 2026, Drupal packages much of it for you. Drupal CMS ships with curated recipes, pre-configured bundles of modules and settings for common needs like SEO, accessibility tools, and events. Drupal Canvas, the new visual page builder built on Single Directory Components, lets non-technical editors compose pages from a governed library of accessible, on-brand components. The result: education teams spend less time assembling infrastructure and more time on content and student experience.
An experienced partner still matters, though. Module selection, SSO integration, multilingual setup, and accessibility compliance are where education projects succeed or stall. Vardot has spent more than a decade building Drupal platforms for universities and schools, including the University of Doha for Science and Technology and Georgetown University in Qatar.
Build Your Education Platform on Drupal
These ten modules, on top of everything now included in Drupal core, give schools and universities a modern, accessible, and maintainable digital platform. Interested in what this looks like in practice? Explore the school and university websites we have built with Drupal, or talk to our team about your project.
Planning a new education website or a Drupal upgrade?
The top modules are Webform (admissions forms), Paragraphs (flexible content), Group (departmental spaces), Smart Date (academic calendars), Search API with Solr, Pathauto, Editoria11y (accessibility), SAML Authentication (campus SSO), Simplenews, and Drupal's AI ecosystem all Drupal 11 compatible.
Layout Builder in Drupal core replaced Panels, Display Suite, and Panelizer for page layouts, with Drupal Canvas as the newer visual builder. Core Configuration Management and Drupal Recipes replaced Features for deploying configuration.
Universities connect Drupal to institutional SSO using the SAML Authentication (samlauth) module for SAML identity providers, or the CAS module for CAS-based systems, letting students and staff log in with campus credentials.
Drupal handles large multi-editor teams with granular permissions, multilingual content, and accessibility built into core which is why institutions like Georgetown, Columbia, and Oxford use it. Its module ecosystem covers admissions forms, course catalogs, events, and campus SSO.
