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Educause experts delineate top 10 IT issues for 2021

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Speaking to a packed ballroom at the 2021 Educause annual conference on Wednesday, Susan Grajek, Educause vice president for partnerships, communities and research, unveiled the list of this year’s top 10 IT issues in higher education.

The trends were selected based on feedback from several IT expert panelists at colleges around the world and included how universities can better develop infrastructure and workforce skills to secure data and supply chains, how to hasten digital transformation to improve operational efficiency, how to ensure faculty have the required digital fluency to effectively engage students, and how to best create a blended campus that effectively balances digital and brick-and-mortar priorities.

Grajek told the crowd that panelists’ work was motivated by their desire to help move institutions from “the higher education we had to the higher education we deserve.”

In the coming years, it will be increasingly important for colleges to “democratize” data so that decisions can be made more rapidly and products can be designed more quickly, said Jeremy Anderson, associate vice chancellor of strategic analytics at Dallas College in Mesquite, Tex., and a current IT issues panel member. Asserting that colleges and universities need to be “less ponderous” about digital transformation, Anderson predicted that as the culture evolves, operational agility and workforce development will lead to a digital transformation defined by lower costs and improved quality.

The discussion unfolded against a backdrop of much thinner crowds than have been seen at previous Educause conferences. Event organizers said 3,000 people attended in person and an additional 1,000 joined virtually, however, a manual count of attendees based on registrants appearing online suggested total attendee numbers hovered closer to 1,500. (Educause organizers said the list on the website is incomplete because some attendees opt out for privacy reasons.) The exhibit hall, normally teeming with college and university technologists and administrators, was eerily empty, with roughly two-thirds the number of companies pitching their wares (214 versus 339 in 2019).

The organizers added that they were pleased with the turnout “given institutional budget restrictions [and] current travel policies.”

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic likely a cause of the decreased crowd size, it was no surprise to hear Grajek cite the pandemic as a major factor for higher ed institutions operating in the current IT landscape. She said COVID accelerated changes that were already happening. A major lesson learned, she said, was the “importance of rehearsal,” with colleges best prepared for a crisis proving most ready to embrace a virtual learning environment. Institutions that “return to status quo or slacken their pace” after the pandemic, Grajek said, “will quickly fall behind.”

The top 10 list assembled by Grajek’s panel of college IT leaders additionally included a warning that colleges must learn from COVID by using digitization to produce technology systems that are more student-centric and equity minded. Additional top 10 themes included how to foster equitable digital access for students by investing in connectivity, tools and skills; the importance of developing a technology-enhanced post-pandemic institutional vision; how to weather the shift to the cloud by creating a cloud and SaaS strategy that reduces costs without a loss of control; how to create a disaster-preparation plan to leverage pandemic-related investments; and how to give students learning spaces that foster creative practices and collaboration.

Joanne Kossuth, the chief innovation officer at Mitchell College and a panel member, said that for many students, the digital medium is now the only medium.

“No longer can institutions dictate the terms,” Kossuth said. “Tech-averse faculty will have to re-evaluate.”

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Data security was a focus of this year’s Educause panel on the top 10 IT issues.
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