I used to work at a large university. (Actually a couple universities.) That was
sorta the case. IT people hated with a passion Blackboard and Talisma. Administrators hated it sometimes, but that isn't their job, because they aren't developers / IT people. Professors often jail break out of it if they can by running their own webpages with HTML table layouts because even that is preferable.
The bottom line I saw is that nobody once admitted to liking either of those systems, but the total amount of work and politics involved to change from those systems meant it was a conversation that never really even occurred.
Some observations I had with respect to migrating away from hulks like Blackboard and Talisma:
1. There were pretty talented people supporting Blackboard and Talisma working for the universities full-time with salary. Both systems were frustrating for them, but the huge amount of work to migrate away from those systems generally stops any hopes of beginning a conversation. Can it be done over summer break? If not, will you do it in parallel? Won't that require more salaries to be hired? can you get the buy in of the other departments who you'll put extra work on because their system already has been coded to chug along and work with those?
2. Politics. I once saw a different university choose an awful CRM because they did a better job courting the top IT advisors at the school. I've seen a university choose Microsoft over Google even though students voted overwhelmingly for Google (emails announcing the Microsoft win were sent out before the students could even have voted)
3. Politics, but this time personal ones. There are people whose role has been to support Blackboard or Talisma for a decade. Their kids are now in high school and all that time the household was supported because their role was Director of Something but really it meant, "make sure your team keeps Blackboard or Talisma going". They'll obviously be hesitant to switch.
(In case you haven't heard of it this is another hulk in higher ed that people don't like, but it persists: http://www.talisma.com/en-us/solutions/highereducation/pages...)