Latest Core Data Service Report on Campus IT Environments

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, has just released the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2007 Summary Report, which summarizes data collected early in 2008 for the past fiscal year from colleges and universities about their campus IT environments, practices, and policies. View the complete report.

As of October 6, 2008, 1,016 campuses had completed the Core Data Service (CDS) survey. Responding institutions were 58% public and 42% private. The large response pool for the core data survey includes institutions of all enrollment sizes, Carnegie classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions, giving the summary report a broad view of the IT environment in higher education.

While there are significant trends in higher education IT benchmarks from one year to another, many of the most interesting changes are specific to community colleges, research institutions, or other Carnegie groups. The survey had 53 questions with nearly 300 data elements. A sample of the key findings includes the following:

Organizational Structure and Leadership

• The percentage of top-level IT administrators sitting on the president’s cabinet increased slightly among all respondents since last year. A higher percentage of associates schools (57%) reported their top IT administrators sit at the president’s cabinet, with a notably higher percentage of top IT administrators reporting directly to the president (37%) compared to all respondents (31%).

IT Financing and Management

• The mean increase of FTE staff across all institutions was 1.98.
• The ratio of centralized IT funding spent per FTE student for all respondents increased from $909 in 2006 to $959 in 2007.
• Overall, the percentage of institutions that reported using external suppliers to run one or more IT functions increased from 61% to more than 65%, the third consecutive year for such an increase.

Security Practices

• Nearly 54% of respondents reported having deployed personal firewall software, a 4% increase since last year.
• About 68% of all respondents reported that they had undertaken a formal campus security risk assessment, an increase of 5% since last year.
• Overall, 60% of respondents reported that they require end-user authentication for all network access, up from 57% last year.

Student and Instructional Computing

• More than 15% of all responding campuses already offer a service to provide online music and movies, with another 17%planning to offer or considering offering this service. This is the second consecutive year that results have shown an increase in this practice.
• The percentage overall of institutions that reported a course management system employed for all or nearly all courses increased significantly from 29% in 2006 to more than 35% in 2007, while only 0.5% of all respondents reported not using or planning to use a CMS.

Deployment of Technologies

• The survey asked the status of 17 specific technologies, from deployed to not planned. The greatest increases in deployment since last year were found for antispyware software, personal firewall software, voice over IP, video over IP, web services, wireless security technologies, and enterprise directory technology.
• About 49% of all respondents reported having already deployed emergency notification systems, with another 47% exploring or considering them. Fewer than 4% of respondents reported not planning an emergency notification system.
• The highest level of wireless network access continues to be in libraries, with 85% of all respondents reporting that 76-100% of their libraries provide wireless access, an increase of 5% from last year.

Information Systems Implementation

• The strategy of using an open source product, with or without modification, was reported by nearly 51% of all respondents, up   from 47% last year and from 32% in 2005.
• More than half (55%) of institutions have completed an ERP (enterprise information system) implementation. Another 16.8% reported an ERP implementation in process.
• More than 96% of institutions with a web portal implemented or planned reported that they have integrated or plan to integrate the portals with campus information systems, and this high level of integration is consistent across all types of institutions.

The centerpiece of the CDS is a web-enabled database with powerful sort and selection tools. Launched in 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.

EDUCAUSE President Diana Oblinger said, "The Core Data Service continues to draw a high level of engagement from a remarkably large segment of the higher education IT community. Comparative information in the powerful CDS database supports data-driven decision making for IT leaders from all types of institutions. CDS allows institutions to explore data on any of the EDUCAUSE four focus areas:Teaching and Learning, Managing the Enterprise, E-Research and E-Scholarship, and the Evolving Role of IT and Leadership."

Access the complete EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2007 Summary Report.

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.