The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report has just been released. This report summarizes data for the past fiscal year collected from more than 950 colleges and universities about their campus IT environments, practices, and policies. Respondents represent all enrollment sizes, Carnegie classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions, providing a broad and deep view of the current IT environment in higher education. The full report can be viewed online free of charge.
Among the notable findings from the report are the following.
- The percentage of top-level IT leaders at all reporting institutions who sit on the president’s cabinet increased nearly 2% over last year, to about 48%, but once again a higher percentage of community colleges reported this to be the case (about 63%, up from 59%).
- Looking at the total number of centralized FTE IT staff this year compared to last year, there was a significant mean increase of 1.85 FTE staff for all responding institutions.
- There was a significant leap in deployment of wireless security technologies since last year at all types of institutions, with an approximately 7% increase in deployment overall and about a 34% increase over the last two years.
- There was an increase among all respondents in offering many kinds of support to faculty in the use of IT in teaching and learning, with “faculty training on request” the most employed support mechanism, reported by more than 94% of respondents.
