Dive Brief:
- A new survey reveals that 64% of campus IT officials regard network operations as a critical part of their department objectives, but that nearly half of the executives surveyed encounter problems reconciling varying forms of data in trying to solve IT issues.
- Many officials believe that sharing data from security management and assessment could prove to be useful in IT management, and that IT will factor heavily into future institutional budget considerations.
- More than 74% of respondents identify cloud-based data management, dashboard administration and compliance as the likely focus of IT administration on campuses in the near future.
Dive Insight:
With falling state appropriations and the complexity of network security growing more by the day, campuses will have to confront the reality and cost of IT and network capacity much sooner than many expected. Students require more bandwidth for device access, and preferably through wireless delivery. Faculty need more connectivity for service delivery to keep up with distance learning demands, and the technology is growing more expensive every year.
With so much at stake, there is a movement for CIOs to take a more prominent role in campus leadership, but it is up to presidents and chancellors to better understand the case for funding to support technological infrastructure and management across a range of areas on campus, and to determine how connectivity can be made into a revenue stream for the institution.