EDUCAUSE and COSTS Higher Ed Technology Surveys Will Merge

Leaders of the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) and the COSTS Project have announced that, later this year, they will integrate their respective efforts to gather and analyze data about the costs and environmental factors of information technology in higher education.

Cost of Supporting Technology Services (COSTS) was started in 1997 by Karen Leach and David Smallen of Hamilton College as an effort to measure the unit costs of providing IT services based on institutional characteristics. They eventually partnered with the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) in refining the instrument and making its completion a condition of annual CLAC membership. According to Smallen, “We feel we have established the importance of IT benchmarks and have successfully opened a dialogue between IT leaders and institutional leaders. We now want this effort to move to the next level, and EDUCAUSE is the organization that has the resources, leadership, and membership size to do just that.”

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service was launched in 2002 to build a comprehensive quantitative picture of the state of information technology at all types and sizes of colleges and universities. The centerpiece of the CDS is a powerful interactive database that is accessible to institutions that complete the survey (621 in 2002, 822 in 2003, and 882 in 2004). With detailed data on IT organization, staffing, and planning; IT financing and management; faculty and student computing; networking and security; and information systems, the CDS database allows participants to look at individual institutions’ data; to aggregate data with filters for Carnegie class, size, and governance; to establish customized peer groups for comparison; and to launch real-time trend analyses.

One major difference between the two surveys is that COSTS looks at projected IT budgets for the coming fiscal year, while CDS captures data about actual funding and expenditures for the past, completed fiscal year. The integrated CDS survey will continue to use the past-fiscal-year model, but will incorporate several key data fields from the COSTS survey to calculate additional benchmark ratios.

While access to the CDS database is restricted to institutions that complete the survey, each year’s extensive aggregate results are assembled into a publicly accessible Core Data Service Summary Report.

In welcoming the pending merger, EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins said, “The addition of the CLAC community and other participants in the COSTS Project will only enhance the gratifying increase in the number of institutions that find the Core Data Service to be an indispensable resource for dispelling myths and bringing a culture of evidence to IT planning.”

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.