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The Age of
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EDUCAUSE 2027 Top 10
The Age of
Perpetual Change
Artificial intelligence (AI) has risen to the number one spot on the 2027 EDUCAUSE Top 10. But its rank signals urgency more than consensus, and higher education is still grappling with what AI-driven change could mean for institutions. In many ways, AI embodies a broader reality:
We're living in an age of perpetual change.
What About Your Institution?
Just like koala fingerprints, no two institutions are exactly alike. Almost certainly, then, the insights generated through this year’s Top 10 report are going to land differently across different institutional and professional settings. The resources below are designed to help you customize the Top 10 to your particular context and explore what these insights might mean for you.
Ask your AI assistant about this year’s Top 10 report
We’ve created a de-identified file you can download, plug into the AI tool of your choice, and use to have a personalized discussion about this year’s Top 10.
This guide is designed for use with AI assistants that can read and consider the full document. It may not function as intended in a custom chatbot, knowledge base, or other system that retrieves only portions of a document.
Note: Content in this guide has been anonymized to protect participating institutions and contributors.
How to Use This Guide
- Download the discussion guide.
- Upload or paste the file into your preferred AI assistant, such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
- If the guide does not begin automatically, type: Begin the guided discussion.
See How Institutions Like Yours Ranked
While our community largely agrees on the issues that matter most for higher education, there are always slight variations across different institutional contexts. We've provided an interactive table sortable by institutional demographics to help you generate a view of the Top 10 that more closely matches your institutional setting. The resulting list is not a reordering of the official Top 10 but instead draws on a broader set of issues based on the institutional characteristics you select.
If you use assistive technology and need assistance accessing the information in this interactive table, please contact
[email protected]
or
call (303) 449-4430
Use the Sorted by FTE and Sorted by Carnegie buttons to switch
between ranking types. Use the dropdown list to select a category.
The table below updates automatically.
Selecting an option updates the issues shown in the table.
Top 10 issues by FTE
| Issue |
|---|
| Measuring and navigating enrollment shifts |
| Reducing friction for more seamless technology experiences |
| Leveraging automation for institutional efficiencies |
| Balancing cybersecurity boundaries with autonomy and trust |
| Future-proofing students for a volatile world |
| Positioning technology leaders as institutional integrators |
| Working creatively within real-world constraints |
| Staying ahead of technology change |
| Building a strong and adaptive data governance backbone |
| Maintaining agility in the technology workforce |
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