CDS Interactive Almanac | IT Spending and Staffing
EDUCAUSE data help you identify practical ranges for budgets and staffing by benchmarking against your peers' resource allocations. To help communicate the value of these data, our most popular benchmarks are summarized and made available to the entire higher education community. Visit the Core Data Service to learn more.
What is a practical range for central IT budget?
Nearly one-third of institutions reported increasing central IT operating expenditures (32%) and central IT capital expenditures (31%) in the 2022–23 fiscal year.
In the prior fiscal year (2021–22)1, central IT departments' expenditures amounted to about 4.9% of their institution's total expenditures.
The median amount of the 2021–22 fiscal year’s expenditures was about $9.5 million, and the median amount of funds that IT departments spent per student was $1,500.
Footnote:
1 We define fiscal year as the most recent fiscal year ending before September 1, 2022, for data collected in the 2022 CDS cycle.
We define the 2021 and 2022 labels in each graphic as the CDS year in which the data was collected.
Based on 399–457 reporting U.S. institutions. Updated Feb. 2023.
What is a practical range for staff size?
More than one-third (37%) of institutions reported increasing central IT staffing in the 2022–23 fiscal year.
Central IT department staffing represented roughly 4.1% of all staff at their institution in the 2021–22 fiscal year.2
Campus IT departments employed a median of about 7 student employee FTEs in the 2021–22 fiscal year.
Footnote:
2 Staff numbers are reported as full-time equivalent (FTE): FTE represents 40 working hours per week over the course of the full fiscal year.
Student FTEs are also reported as 1 FTE = 40 hours of work per week; so 4 students working 10 hours per week = 1 FTE.
Based on 400–401 reporting U.S. institutions. Updated Feb. 2023.
What's important to know now?
One-third (33%) of new central IT hires in the 2021–22 fiscal year were from underrepresented groups.3
More than one-tenth (12%) of central IT staff departed in the 2021–22 fiscal year.
IT departments spent a median of $494 per staff member on professional development in the 2021–22 fiscal year.
Overall, central IT budgets saw minimal change across institution types from fiscal year 2021–22 to fiscal year 2022–23.
With the exception of doctoral institutions, the lower ends of the ranges of central IT budgets slightly declined year over year from fiscal year 2021–22 to fiscal year 2022–23.
Footnote:
3 Based on 266–379 reporting U.S. institutions. Updated Feb. 2023