EDUCAUSE Releases Latest Report on Campus IT Environments

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, has announced the release of the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2004 Summary Report, which summarizes data collected early in 2005 for the past fiscal year from colleges and universities about their campus IT environments and practices. As of September 1, 2005, 908 campuses had completed the 2004 survey, an increase of 7% over last year.

Given the participation of so many institutions—representing all enrollment sizes, Carnegie Classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions—the Summary Report provides a broad and deep view of the current IT environment in higher education.  Key findings include the following:

Organizational structure and leadership

• a significant increase in the percentage of top-level IT persons sitting on the president’s cabinet, with the greatest change occurring in baccalaureate schools, which are up nearly 4.5% from last year

IT management practices

• an increase in total central IT staff reported, but also an increase in the ratio of students supported per central IT staff member, suggesting that staffing levels may not be keeping up with enrollment increases
• the percentage of institutions outsourcing one or more IT functions increasing over the past year, from 48% to 53%
• a significant increase in the percentage of schools tracking bandwidth utilization (up about 12%) and an increase in bandwidth shaping of every type (by time of day, by campus location, by direction, and by type of traffic)—likely in response to the issues and challenges surrounding the use of peer-to-peer technology on campus

IT security practices

• use of firewalls at the external Internet connection reported by 86.6% of all schools, up 4.6% from last year
• an overwhelming increase in security-related practices across the board when compared to last year

Deployment of newer technologies

• a striking growth in wireless network access, with more than 57% of all responding institutions reporting that 76–100% of their libraries provide wireless access, up 15% since last year, with a parallel 15% increase in the deployment of wireless security technologies
• significant increases in the use of voice-over-IP, video-over-IP, enterprise directory, smart card, and Web services technologies

Student and instructional computing

• a significant increase in student computer ownership, with the median percentage of students reported to be using their own computers increasing from 75% to 80%
• a quarter of all schools reporting that they already offer, plan to offer, or are considering offering a campus-negotiated service to provide online music and movies, in response to illegal file sharing activities
• an across-the-board increase among all institutions in offering many kinds of support to faculty in the use of IT in teaching and learning

Information systems implementations

• the percentage of campuses having implemented an ERP (enterprise information system) increasing significantly since last year (up more than 5%)
• the percentage of schools implementing a portal increasing from 31% last year to 39% this year
• 96% of all schools reporting that they have integrated or plan to integrate their Web portals with their administrative systems

“The unprecedented pressure for accountability in higher education,” said EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins, “has been especially targeted at information technology, requiring IT leaders to explain and justify the costs and benefits of the expenses associated with their areas. Fundamental to such efforts is having reliable data about information technology practices, structures, and expenditures at comparable institutions for benchmarking purposes.” The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS), now in its third year, was created to provide just such a resource for the higher education IT community.

In 2002, the task force of IT leaders from a variety of institutions that developed the CDS had to meet the challenge of designing a survey that would be meaningful and manageable for institutions ranging from community colleges through baccalaureate schools and doctoral universities. Roughly 50 questions are grouped under five categories: IT Organization, Staffing, and Planning; IT Financing and Management; Faculty and Student Computing; Network and Security; and Information Systems. This year’s survey captured data for the 2004 fiscal year.

The centerpiece of the CDS is a Web-enabled database with powerful sort and selection tools. Launched in late May 2003 with 2002 data and updated annually each May, the database is accessible only to campuses that complete the survey. Before gaining access, CDS participants agree not to share any of the information retrieved from the database beyond planning teams on their individual campuses. The service allows for the creation of customized aggregations (including peer groups of like campuses), on-the-fly generation of data summaries for each question, viewing of raw data identifiable by institution, a trend analysis tool, and a set of commonly sought ratios for benchmarking.

Dozens of participants have commented on the value of the CDS program. For example, Jeffrey Cepull, assistant vice president for Information Resources at Philadelphia University, said, “The Core Data Service is a premier EDUCAUSE program. Completing the survey each year is a very appropriate use of my time. I find the compiled data to be an invaluable technology planning tool.”

In the spring of 2005, leaders of EDUCAUSE and the COSTS Project—a data collection activity focused on identifying and capturing the cost of networking on campus—announced that by the end of the year they would integrate their respective efforts to gather and analyze data about the costs and environmental factors of information technology in higher education. The merger of the surveys will be effected in time for the launch of the CDS survey in January 2006, which will collect fiscal-year 2004-2005 data.

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2004 Summary Report presents aggregates of the data in useful table format, showing national averages and response variations by different institutional types and sizes. The report is available in PDF format [673 KB] at www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub8002.pdf.

Print copies will be available in mid-October at $10 each. General information about the Core Data Service may be found at www.educause.edu/coredata.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.