2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10
#10 (tie): Building Bridges, Not Walls

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Colleges and universities will be focusing on increasing digital access for students while also maintaining privacy and data protection. As technology continues to advance, institutions aim to provide up-to-date digital resources and tools that enhance learning and prepare students for careers. However, expanding access to digital platforms and information also raises questions about how best to protect students' privacy and institutional data.

The Promise

Increasing the appeal of higher education. Students benefit from more digital access. But they are harmed when their personal data is stolen or exposed. Institutions that can increase digital access and protect students' privacy and data will bring the learning and institutional resources to the student while helping them feel safe. That will increase trust in higher education and make students' experiences more convenient.

Fully integrating learning environments and modalities. Increasing students' digital access involves redefining the learning territories—whose borders extend beyond the traditional physical campus boundaries—and integrating them into the academic strategies. This is especially true for hybrid and HyFlex configurations, which hold the promise of helping high-quality education become dramatically more flexible and available worldwide through multimodal access. These trends require redesigning learning environments and building protected bridges to connect off-site environments to the campus itself.

Closing the digital divide. The digital divide may pertain to equipment, bandwidth, digital fluency, tools and applications, access to peers and mentors, or an environment conducive to learning. Although it is not always the case, expensive technological advances may expand the digital divide, as those who "have" use their greater resources to rapidly acquire cutting-edge devices, tools, and high-speed networks.^Footnote1 It is those who "have-not" or "have-less" whose digital access needs to increase. Institutions that focus on these populations can help close the widening digital divide.

Increasing access to data and information. The rate of data creation has never been greater and is expected to continue to increase.^Footnote2 Removing barriers to data and information—which could be a lack of access, a lack of data literacy, or cost—to ensure students get the data they need when they need it and where they need it is critical to preparing students for the workforce and their post-collegiate lives.

Improving student outcomes. Students may care most about their grades, but they also have access to a wealth of other data that they may not be as tuned in to, such as their LMS usage. In addition, there is a wealth of personal data the institution is tracking that students don't have access to, such as their persistence in a major, study rooms booked per term, or use of computing resources. Restricting access to data helps protect students' privacy and data security. However, the more information they have about their education and progress, the better able they can manage their education.

Increasing digital literacy. Increased computing power and data, as well as more widespread artificial intelligence (AI) exacerbate and complicate long-standing data and privacy-related ethical challenges. Staff and faculty should teach students about the risks and responsibilities that go hand in hand with widespread digital access. This will contribute to grooming future workers and digital citizens with the skills and values to use data ethically and carefully and to advocate for their digital rights.

Enhancing opportunities for collaboration. Innovation and forward-looking teaching and learning practices require collaboration. Expanding access to data and digital resources can help make collaboration easier and more widespread. Again, wider and multimodal access requires greater safeguards and more training.

Strengthening ties to employers. By granting students digital access and ownership of their own data (e.g., study records, competence portfolios, etc.) and enabling digital consent management, institutions can help students build their own "digital brand" and market it to prospective employers. The MyData portfolio concept in Finland is an example of this kind of empowerment.^Footnote3 Institutions can also better align curricula with industry needs by intentionally associating curricula with skills and competencies and sharing that information with companies (without, of course, providing any data that could be traced to individual students).

Also, by granting employers an anonymized digital access to the competencies that come out of higher education institutions, academic leaders can better align study offerings with industry needs.

The Key to Progress

Interoperability frameworks for data, digital access, and data protection would be game-changing. The key to progress lies in fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility, with institutions working together to develop common frameworks and standards for digital access and data protection. This collaborative approach can help overcome resource limitations, accelerate innovation, and ensure that best practices are widely shared and adopted. Doing this voluntarily as a community of institutions and solution providers will enable institutions and organizations to achieve interoperability sooner and forestall government regulators stepping in to dictate requirements and timelines.

QuickTakes

Start with a vision for a sustainable expansion of digital access. The outcomes and scope for each institution will differ. Without a clear, shared vision for expanding digital access, projects may be technically successful without advancing the institution. Adopt an approach like backward design or logic models, where the end state is clearly defined at the start and used to clarify the inputs needed, and guide the work on an ongoing basis.

Create a consistent campus-wide strategy. A vision serves as a focal point for a common, institution-wide understanding of goals and projects. Leaders from academic and business units throughout the institution should help develop it. Cocreating the strategy lays the groundwork for planning, funding, and staffing the work in ways that fairly involve all stakeholders and incorporate the voices of faculty and students.

Position IT as a strategic enabler. If the IT department is positioned primarily as a cost center, institutional leaders and stakeholders will miss out on the strategic contributions and deep knowledge of the institution that technology and data leaders can supply.

Integrate regulatory requirements into the strategy and solution. Increased digital access must be accompanied by greater data privacy and security safeguards. This involves not only ensuring compliance with existing privacy and data protection regulations but also designing solutions and processes that can adapt to new requirements and changing institutional circumstances.

Don't let the day-to-day crowd out preparing for the future. Whether they are preoccupied with putting out fires or are resistant to culture change, many stakeholders will avoid taking on major new projects. But we're in a maelstrom of change and disruption, and leaders need to prioritize work that adapts and transforms the institution to ensure its survival.

Manage the risks of social exclusion. Increasing digital access could supplant face-to-face interactions, which could increase students' digital loneliness. Leaders need to anticipate this potential outcome and find ways to counteract it.

Modernize your architecture. Transitioning to integration platforms, service buses, and other elements of digital architecture will make expanding digital access easier, less expensive, and more secure.

Deepen and expand existing remote programs. The definition of the campus has already dramatically changed. Institutions for which hybrid and HyFlex programs are strategic and that already have differentiating remote programs can grow them and extend the campus to educate and support face-to-face and synchronous and asynchronous remote students, safely, equitably, and efficiently. Leaders at other institutions could explore the potential value of investing in digital access to expand programmatic flexibility.

Ask Yourself

How do we redefine the concept of campus in a digitally connected world while preserving the core values and mission of higher education?

The Bottom Line

Extended and multimodal access leads to more equitable learning experiences and outcomes, richer learning experiences, expanded student populations, greater continuity during transitions from secondary to postsecondary to employment, and easier transfers during postsecondary education.

Data Point

The 2023 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Survey found that "students living off campus were significantly less likely to prefer on-site modes of course engagement compared with their peers who live on campus (see figure 1). With the exception of labs or interactive work and group activities (course activities that in many cases are more suitable for in-person engagement), a majority of students living off campus reported a preference for online modalities."^Footnote4

From Strategy to Practice

What You're Saying

"We collect a large amount of data on students, and they need to feel safe in this new digital age."

"The university campus of the 21st century will not be a physical one. The sooner we change, the better the chance we have of surviving as an educational institution. This is an imperative!"

"Unfortunately, this will always be a challenge. We can only do so much with the resources we have. During the pandemic, the college stood up a very generous loaner device program. We are now at a point where that program has to be right-sized, as the current program is abused and not truly serving the intended purpose."

"Accessibility isn't new, but there is more at stake, and we have a large divide between faculty knowledge of AI (low) and student need (high) as well as expanding regulations."

"We can't do this alone. This is a larger national issue that requires additional investments."

"We want our students to have access to all the digital resources that they need but also ensure their data and privacy stays intact. Often, that is challenging, particularly as more data compromises occur across our industry."

"We are always in search of tools to empower students to have access and functionality for their education experience. We rely on academics to help drive new technology ideas."

Solution Spotlights

"Indiana University is doing a great deal around accessibility, working with internal stakeholders and external vendors to meet Title II compliance requirements by April 2026."

Sarah Engel, Indiana University

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"Our university has continuously prioritized investments in IT infrastructure and services. Currently, for each initiative supported by EU funding aimed at upgrading the university's facilities, there is at least one key action focused on enhancing digital infrastructure and services. So far, 20 percent of our classrooms have been upgraded to support hybrid learning, with plans to extend this to 50 percent. Simultaneously, we are investing in educational software licenses and services to enrich our digital content."

Angeliki Agorogianni, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

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"Equitable access to digital resources is a priority for our institution in an ever-changing digital landscape. Through our e-text program, we work to ensure students get access to materials for the first day of classes, which leads to a higher degree of student success. Providing software at no cost as well as access to virtual desktops helps enable students access that they might not otherwise have."

Aaron Neal, Indiana University Bloomington

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"We are in the process of creating a student 'passport' for enabling access to all things digital to access all services available at the university, including learning resources. All undergraduate students currently have a university supplied iPad, which is theirs to keep. When the student passports are completed, the iPads will be fully integrated into our ecosystem, so it becomes the gateway for our students to fully realize all services, learning, research, registration, athletics, food services, and many, many more. This environment will also support notifications. We expect this integration to increase the students' sense of belonging, which is a driver for their success."

Sasi Pillay, University of Nevada, Reno

What You're Working On

Comments provided by Top 10 survey respondents who rated this issue as important

Access management

• Least privilege access.
• Implemented a new VPN solution and firewall. Implementing role-based security where possible.
• Students bring their own devices to campus to use for coursework, so implementing DUO ensures the student can do what they need and do so through an authenticated process.
• Moving to using Azure SSO for all services.

AI use

• Finding ways to allow students to use GenAI in a safe and approved manner. Working with faculty to help them understand how to help students.
• The Responsible AI workgroup will help to establish a new privacy capability so that we can make better decisions about what and how to leverage data.
• AI literacy and policy are underway.

Centralized point of access

• Improved student portal and resource access for students.
• Campus app developed on the Rokwire open-source platform.
• Providing Windows virtual desktop access so students can remotely use all the software available on campus at home.
• The majority of the projects within the ERP system are about increasing access for students. That means access to classes, access to counselors, and access to advisors, all with the goal of getting them from point A to B as efficiently as possible.
• Reduce the amount of siloed technologies and data platform across units by simplifying the portfolio of applications and collapsing redundant solutions into central solutions for a better student experience.
• Modernizing our student, faculty, and staff portal.
• Implemented Apporto virtual computer lab to increase student access.

Compliance requirements

• Our state has an additional requirement to FERPA/HIPAA, and we can't really flub privacy on anything.
• Increasing digital access is a given, so our focus is on the things we need to do to safeguard privacy and protect their information. Information security and privacy are risk and compliance issues, and they have taken center-stage in our institution's thinking, planning, and investments.

Cybersecurity focus

• We are developing security measures that balance security/privacy and growth/innovation and purposefully implement them to increase efficiency and improve experiences.
• Ongoing penetration testing / assumed compromise exercises.

Data access

• Increased data access and personalization for all constituent groups.

Data governance

• Data governance and tools to manage.

Guiding principles

• Our guiding principles are based around equity of access and experience. We continue to look at ways of making sure every student can utilize available digital capabilities.
• Being a student-ready college.
• Privacy and secure data are at the forefront of all of our technology initiatives.

Increasing availability of tools

• Tools for student self-monitoring. Keeping students informed of how they are progressing and what they need to do to continue.
• Enabling tools to be available to all students.

Making equipment available

• We created a loaner program for students needing laptops. The initial launch of fifteen laptops was successful, and we're looking to triple that in the coming year.
• Developing a program to provide all incoming students with start-up computing devices.
• At our institution, digital access equals laptops, so we're continually trying to build up the collection of library checkout machines for long-term loan to students.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure and laptop checkouts.
• We have been providing laptops to students who lack access.

Partnership

• We continue to mature our dual-credit program with regional high schools.

Training and awareness

• Working to increase awareness of cybersecurity treats and tools for prevention.
• Continuing to move processes and procedures online, requiring faculty to use digital tools, but training everyone that every mention of a student in an email or text is an academic record. Be efficient with communication and be mindful of privacy.
• Educating students regarding data privacy and protection is an important part of our IT security program.

Updating digital infrastructure

• Virtualization and remote connectivity to allow for in-community learning, including a focus on Indigenous communities.
• Finishing the secure computing initiative and implementing the campus-wide CRM strategy.
• We increased the Wi-Fi capabilities in most of our common spaces.

Notes

1. "Non-White American Parents Are Embracing AI Faster Than White Ones," The Economist, June 27, 2024. Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. Luca Clissa, Mario Lassnig, and Lorenzo Rinaldi, "How Big Is Big Data? A Comprehensive Survey of Data Production, Storage, and Streaming in Science and Industry," Frontiers in Big Data 6 (October 2023). Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. "Finnish Data Entry: Your Digital Data Can Become 'MyData,'" This Is Finland (website), n.d., accessed September 25, 2024. Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. Mark McCormack, 2023 Students and Technology Report: Flexibility, Choice, and Equity in the Student Experience, research report, (EDUCAUSE, August 2023). Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩

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John Augeri is Center for Teaching and Learning Director at Île-de-France Digital University.

Erin DeSilva is Associate Provost, Digital and Online Learning at Dartmouth College.

David Escalante is Director of Computer Security at Boston College.

Christa Winqvist is Chief Information Officer at Aalto University.

Felix Zuñiga is Campus Engagement Partner at The California State University, Office of the Chancellor.