EDUCAUSE identifies campus IT challenges

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, August, 2001

In an article of the EDUCAUSE Quarterly, EDUCAUSE summarizes its second annual survey of top campus IT challenges by saying "administrative systems challenges have escalated, the IT staffing crisis continues, distance education is steady state, and security management has the potential to explode."

The survey asks for current issues important for an institutions success as well as for issues that have the potential for explosive strategic impact. "Steady state" for distance education places it, for the second year in a row, at the top of the list for having the potential for explosive strategic impact. Currently, institutions rank distance education as number five for importance to resolve for the institution's strategic success. That level of importance varies between classifications of institutions. Distance education did not even make the top-ten list for baccalaureate institutions; it heads the list for two-year Associate of Arts institutions; and it falls midway on the list for Master's institutions and Research and Doctorate institutions.

Public institutions rank distance education as more important to their immediate strategic success than do private institutions. And currently, the larger the school, the higher the ranking for the strategic importance of distance education. Even so, all categories in terms of size and public vs private rank distance education at the top of the list for the greatest potential for strategic impact.

IT budgets and the time of IT leaders or administrators are partly occupied by distance education but the more immediate needs of "administrative systems/ERP" and "maintaining the network and IT infrastructure" put far more pressing demands on the budget. Priorities for time include "IT funding strategies" and "IT strategic planning."

"Online student services" -- enrollment management, customization, student portals, web-based applications and distributed printing -- basically held steady in terms of current strategic importance and potential explosiveness, but dropped in terms of expenditures and time devoted to them. Online student services rank higher with private schools than public schools, and they rank higher with small institutions than with large ones.

"Teaching and Learning Strategies" -- an issue which references distributed education for enhancing the classroom experience and includes electronic learning environments, courseware development, building vs. buying instructional management systems, standards for objects, data elements and exchange and the relationship between educational theory and educational outcome - has a top-ten ranking for current strategic success and potential for explosive strategic impact.

"Web-based systems development and integration," notes the report "just barely missed the top-ten rankings for both current strategic importance and potential explosiveness." This is the first year for these issues to be on the survey. Similarly, e-commerce, though not on any overall top-ten lists, is identified as a potentially explosive issue for all classifications except baccalaureate schools.

In the past year "Advanced Networking" -- which includes Internet2 as well as affording increased broadband, upgrading the campus network for advanced applications, connecting to regional networks and quality of service (QoS) strategies -- fell off the top-ten lists for current strategic success and expenditure of institutional resources, but it made it as number nine for issues with potential for explosive strategic impact.

Ubiquitous Computing/Universal access is an issue new to the 2001 survey and includes remote access, mobile computing and access for persons with disabilities. The EDUCAUSE Quarterly article says that colleges "recognize ubiquity as a necessity, but aren't yet sure how best to achieve it."