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In This Issue
Trust, but Verify
9/30/2004
) as well as from the EDUCAUSE Core Data Survey (www.educause.edu/coredata/) suggest that total campus IT spending now runs about 7 to 8 percent of institutional budgets—almost double the level that colleges and universities spent on IT in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Alas, I’m not aware of any reliable campus IT expenditure data for the late 1980s. There are certainly “consensual estimates,” but no hard data for this period.)to still more investments in IT—without
documented enhancements in productivity,
enhanced educational outcomes, or reduced costs.
2—Tech consumes everyone’s bucks. The forensic accountants we would need in order to get an accurate number for total IT spending would find that there are technology expenditures across the campus, not just in selected academic departments or for centralized IT services. The physics department needs its own server, while the photography program requires equipment for a digital darkroom. Individual faculty and individual departments pay supplemental fees for online journals. Student labs and faculty computers may be both a departmental expense as well as an institutional expenditure. The emergence of internal service fees for network connections and user support contribute to rising technology costs and growing frustration about campus IT services.
3—Missing bang for the bucks? IT spending in the Information Age seems to run counter to the layperson’s “textbook” understanding about the link between productivity and technology. In the Industrial Age, investing in technology reliably led to reduced costs and rising productivity. In the Information Age (at least in education and on college campuses), many presidents and provosts feel that that the continuing investment in technology for research, academic programs, and campus operations seems to lead to still more investments in information technology without the documented gains in productivity and educational outcomes, and without any reductions in IT or other costs.
4—Operating vs. capital costs. Because IT is really an operating cost as opposed to a capital cost, the continuing (and rising!) campus expenditures on technology required to support research, academic programs, and administrative services are an ongoing irritant for many senior campus officials, as well as for many trustees. The structural obsolescence embedded in hardware and software, coupled with annual licensing fees for system software and digital content services, means that colleges and universities are continually buying—and often buying more—technology.
5—Digital life in the new world order. Finally, in the weeks and months following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, colleges and universities (like corporations and government agencies) incurred significant additional costs to address critical IT security and disaster recovery issues.
Recommended Reading
- Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Dartmouth Beefs Up Cell Coverage, Cuts Costs
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light.
- Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Dartmouth Beefs Up Cell Coverage, Cuts Costs
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- Security Researchers Uncover Spring Framework Vulnerability
Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks.
