Institutional Resilience
Institutional resilience is the ability to anticipate, respond to, and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances in ways that maximize opportunities and minimize impacts of unforeseen events.
In 2025 and beyond, college and university leaders can strengthen institutional resilience by building flexible processes, rethinking budgeting and staffing models, treating data as a strategic asset, and encouraging collaboration across higher education.
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Build Flexible Processes ➞ -
Rethink Budgets and Staffing ➞ -
Treat Data as a Strategic Asset ➞ -
Collaborate to Share Resources ➞
Build Flexible Processes
To foster resilience in the modern era, institutional leaders must build flexible processes that enable interconnected adaptability, prioritize data fluency, strengthen operational agility, and embrace change.
Find out more in “Building Institutional Resilience to Adapt and Thrive in Times of Uncertainty”
Psst! Don’t miss the August 2025 EDUCAUSE Leadership Series Resilient Leadership in the Workplace: Leveraging Neuroscience and Emotional Intelligence to Navigate Adversity.
Rethink Budgets and Staffing
Higher education leaders must guide short-term adaptation through programmatic, budgetary, and staffing adjustments, while also planning for long-term strategies enabled, in part, by emerging technologies and data capabilities.
Learn more with EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: Technology Budgets and Staffing
Psst! Register for the August 2025 EDUCAUSE Learning Lab Beyond the Budget: Strategic Fiscal Planning for Higher Education Leaders to learn about building a values-driven financial roadmap that fosters proactive, strategic decision-making.
Treat Data as a Strategic Asset
The capacity to harness and trust institutional data is quickly becoming a defining factor in long-term institutional resilience and success. Building stakeholder engagement early, demonstrating quick wins, and aligning data initiatives with broader institutional goals can help leaders manage the complexities of data modernization.
Dive in with EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: Data Modernization and Management
Psst! Join the September 2025 EDUCAUSE Learning Lab Data Storytelling | The What, Why, and How to discover the many uses, required skills, and complexities of telling a compelling story with and about data.
Collaborate to Share Resources
Higher education institutions are interconnected, and preparing for the challenges ahead will take organized community effort.
Add your resources and ideas to the collaborative document here, which will be compiled into an Institutional Resilience Toolkit releasing in August.
Psst! The collaborative document is a community-driven brainstorming resource. Feel free to jump in and add your thoughts!
Showcase Webinar
Missed the Showcase Webinar | Institutional Resilience on July 14? Check out the slides and recording to catch up on the conversation!
Preparing to build your institution’s resilience doesn’t stop here. Continue on to find additional resources and insights from your peers, industry experts, and EDUCAUSE.
Hear from the Community and Analysts
Feed Your Curiosity
Hear from Your Peers in EDUCAUSE Review
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Marc Hoit, Jackie Milhans, and Lisa Trubitt, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 | #6: Institutional Resilience: Contributing to institutional efforts to prepare for and address a growing number and range of risks"
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Vito Forte, Mark Johnston, Michele Norin, Lisa Trubitt and Christa Winqvist, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 | #10 (tie): Supportable, Sustainable, and Affordable: Developing an institutional strategy for new technology investments, pilots, policies, and uses"
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Wesley Johnson, Michele Norin, Lisa Trubitt, and Luke VanWingerden, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 #2: Administrative Simplification: Streamlining and modernizing processes, data, and technologies"
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Nath Czechowski, Erin DeSilva, Marc Hoit, and Luke VanWingerden, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 #7: Faster, Better, AND Cheaper: Using technology to personalize services, automate work, and increase agility"
- Jacquelyn Malcolm Bailey and John Dunning, EDUCAUSE Shop Talk | "Designing for Institutional Resilience in a Changing World" [podcast]
Dive into the Data and Research
Engage in Professional Learning
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Learning Lab | Unlocking Change: Integrating AI and Change Management – August 2025
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Support learning about AI across all of higher education
Continue the Conversation in Community Groups
Bookmark EDUCAUSE Library Pages
Meet the Industry Experts
Get to know David Hinson, Campus CIO, Boldyn Networks, in this quick clip.
Get to know Todd Thorsen, Chief Information Security Officer, CrashPlan, in this quick clip.
Don’t miss the next Showcase.
We hope this showcase helped you learn more about building resilient institutions. Next up, we’ll explore the higher education workforce in Putting People First, launching August 2025.
Note
- Gartner, Predicts 2025: Moving Resilience From Definition to Implementation, By David Gregory, Michael Aldridge, Arthur Sivanathan, Belinda Wilson, 24 February 2025
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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