EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 46, Number 6, November/December 2011

By gathering data and information, several organizations are making significant headway in studies of information technology and higher education. Together, these studies and surveys offer a view of the current higher education technology landscape.

The unprecedented challenges facing the educational system, combined with higher education’s cultural success at solving daunting challenges through the widespread application of information technology, have created the conditions for rapid change.

Higher education IT data needs to go beyond descriptive analysis to new ways of using data and research to align IT strategy with institutional strategy, plan new services and initiatives, manage existing services, and operate the IT organization on a daily basis.

Technology leaders must participate in strategy creation as well as operational delivery within higher education institutions. The future of higher education—the view to tomorrow—is irrevocably integrated and intertwined with evolving technologies such as alternative IT sourcing and mobility.

In the modern university, information management is, or should be, at the heart of both strategic and operational management. So how can we best ensure that information management, broadly defined, will both influence and facilitate institutional strategy?