The state of U.S. higher education: reflections from EDUCAUSE 2024

October is probably the most important month in higher education IT. After a summer of hard work to get infrastructure ready for the new academic year, and a busy start of the year, welcoming freshmen and putting out fires, IT professionals congregated the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2024, to learn from each other and share their challenges. Over 4,000 higher ed technology leaders and professionals from all over the world descended upon San Antonio, Texas over 4 days, to attend the industry’s largest event.

The AppsAnywhere team were at the heart of conversations during the event attending sessions, speaking to hundreds of people on the booth and hosting customer and CIO events. We wanted to share with you our take on the top 5 most talked about themes and priorities for the US HE sector.

Data

Data is more important than brick and mortar, it’s the institutions’ lifeline, the foundation that supports progress. Data can be the biggest challenge and opportunity for future decision making, the use of Generative AI and the personalisation of HE for students, all at the same time, it can be a blocker or an enabler, a double-edged sword that can get in the way of innovation or can be a catalyst for it. Something institutions are feeling the pressure to deal with but requires careful navigation.

The data management landscape has changed significantly, thanks to AI and automation. This allows universities to not only store their data more securely, but also mine it for insights or isolate it for specific purposes with a fraction of the effort it used to take.

With Gen AI, institutions can make better use of unstructured data in a secure way and interrogate it in multiple ways to ensure insights are reliable.  But before embarking on that journey, there needs to be trust and confidence in its traceability, integrity and validity, with better data ownership. Unlike other sectors, higher education has tons of new and legacy data, being generated at a tremendous pace, so it’s understandable why it is taking it longer to jump on the AI band wagon, but there are positive signs of progress in the right direction.

Once the sector of the custom-build, higher ed seems more open to standardization, recognizing the benefits of standardized processes and data, and being more willing to change internal processes and use a product as it was built if it achieves efficiencies.

Efficiency and effectiveness

Institutions are managing a difficult balancing act, to continue to improve performance, student experience, sustainability, cybersecurity and new technology adoption with diminishing budgets and human resources.

To do more with less, IT teams are increasingly seizing opportunities to simplify, consolidate, integrate and automate processes, and to collaborate across disciplines to improve efficiency. We’ve seen examples of IT teams collaborating with Estates teams to better integrate the physical and digital realms. From air quality to safety controls, from reporting repairs to managing occupancy and use of computer labs, these tasks will eventually be automated, but so much effort and careful planning will need to go into it before that happens. What’s really exciting is the eagerness to start now, work with what exists, and keep building to reach the vision.

The age-old sayings “necessity breeds innovation”, and “with every challenge comes opportunity” ring true for the sector right now. Rather than reducing investments in new technologies, many IT leaders are choosing to retire legacy systems and use the financial constraints to invest in doing things differently. For instance, many universities are doing away with desktop computers, instead replacing them with laptops and investing in enabling secure BYOD. Win-win for university and students, who prefer to use their own devices, and take their work outside of university halls.

Taking a whole life cycle perspective on products and services is starting to replace the short-termism previously seen, with institutions becoming more mature in considering the lifetime return on investment. For example, one institution realized the administrative cost of loaning laptops to students was larger than that of letting them borrow them for free, so they run a free medium-term loan scheme to help students without access to suitable devices.

In the same vein, staff hours are now gaining in importance, with efforts to increase productivity by outsourcing and automating repetitive tasks. Software engineers don’t want to spend hours on end packaging hundreds of applications each time there’s an update, they want someone to take that off their plates. To better support the sector, technology will need to be more intuitive, do more of the heavy lifting, and provide actionable data and insights.

Student experience

The U.S. higher education is currently going through a trust crisis – while many people still value higher education, fewer than ever think it’s worth it. This is demonstrated by the significant drop in enrollments, not helped by the FAFSA fiasco, which has disproportionately affected people from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds.

But fighting for student enrollments is only part of the equation, and a flexible and seamless experience across both physical and digital are key in promoting student engagement and success. With education and living costs going up, more students than ever need to work to support themselves through their degrees; students from disadvantaged backgrounds will need additional supports to succeed; teaching and learning need to adapt fast to meet the changing workplace demands; students’ expectations for minimal digital standards and use of AI are increasing, and institutions are not there yet. Institutions must adapt fast, and be bold in their innovations to overcome this confidence crisis.

College athletics are shaping up to become more professional, with new policies and practices coming into place soon. This will not only fire up competition for top athletes among colleges, but also has potential to increase the inequality of educational provision between athletes and non-athletes, further exacerbating the attainment gap. With more focus on sports performance comes more expectation for flexibility and remote provision of education for athlete students, to enable them to keep up with their studies while they train or travel for competitions.

On the faculty front, the culture wars between academic freedom, antisemitism and freedom of speech push faculty members to ban lecture recordings and create an environment of instability and unease for both students and academics. This has a flow-on effect one colleges’ ability to provide hybrid and online learning, when demand for online courses is higher than ever.

Despite the many challenges and the fragmented student experience, what is clear is that many institutions show an acute awareness of these issues, and a willingness to change. There are already many initiatives underway to enhance the digital campus and tackle inequalities. More on enhancing the student digital experience here.

Security and privacy

Education is a hot target for cyberattacks - 87% of US education institutions reported a breach or attack in 2023. The stats for the sector are off the charts when it comes to ransomware, impersonation or denial of service when compared with other sectors. But what is notable is that the sector is also a lot better at detecting, reporting and controlling these incidents. Also, unlike in other sectors, cybersecurity is taken seriously at leadership level. Institution leaders have a good understanding of its risks and implications, and they are supportive of investments in this area.

In the U.S., there are currently no mandatory cybersecurity regulation or standards for colleges, but increasingly more leaders are expecting it to be introduced over the coming years, in the same vein as the UK’s Cyber Essentials.

The collaborative nature of higher education opens it to more vulnerability. So, when it comes to cybersecurity, the best line of protection is zero trust – assume everyone will lose your data. If you can’t protect it, don’t share it. If you can’t revoke access to it, don’t share it. Your data can’t be critical and undefendable.

Resilience and sustainability

Institutional resilience is the ability to anticipate, respond and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances in ways that maximize opportunities and minimize negative impacts of unforeseen events. There is a lot of discussion around institutional resilience, and colleges’ ability to continue to deliver their core mission, whether that is through avoiding existential threats, modernizing and securing its digital infrastructure, transforming teaching and learning or remaining competitive in the face of continuous innovation.

Technology is an opportunity and threat – cybersecurity and IT challenges being one of the key risks for higher education. However, it presents the biggest opportunity for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible and agile. For instance, many institutions are prepared for another pandemic-like disruption, with online learning as the default, but there are still so many that are not. When it comes to risk mitigation and management, institutions are best to collaborate than compete, join resources and knowledge for mutual benefit.

Somewhat less prominent in discussions, sustainability will grow in importance over the next few years.

Collaboration and leadership

The “how” is just as important as the “what”, and what really stands out in the higher education is the increased willingness to collaborate, both internally within institutions, and externally, between institutions and with their supply chain.

We can't do it alone. Initiative leaders need to find consultants and solution providers who understand higher education and have a track record of success with similar kinds of institutions. They can help set expectations with the community and help avoid missteps that have tripped others up in the past. Source: Educause Top 10

Daring leadership, as coined by Dr Brené Brown, is more important than ever. The US has a mass leadership crisis at top level. The political polarisation around the Israel-Hamas war, and the deepening divergence of views on the value and function of higher education in society, is creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and putting Presidents in a position of public scrutiny and criticism many prefer to avoid. (Deloitte 2024 Higher Education Trends)

While riding the political and ideological wave, institutions need to create multiple layers of leadership, devolve decisions and responsibilities to ensure not only business continuity, but also a widespread ability to shape and execute their strategic objectives.

With many higher ed leaders facing new and complex challenges, it’s more important than ever to put collaboration first.

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