The Essential Infrastructure No One Is Planning For

Over my many years in higher education, I've watched campus leaders plan thoughtfully to ensure the success of their institutional mission. Critical priorities—such as improving enrollment and retention, ensuring student success, adding or enhancing facilities, and strengthening cybersecurity—are common in strategic plans. But I believe we have a collective blind spot when it comes to the infrastructure underpinning it all.

The network, Wi-Fi, and the wired backbone form the connective tissue that every upstream priority depends on to function. Connectivity shows up in every strategic plan implicitly but in almost none of them explicitly. The data bears this out. Across four consecutive years of EDUCAUSE Top 10 lists, from 2023 through 2026, connectivity has never appeared as a standalone concern.^Footnote1

That's worth pausing on, if not reconsidering. Connectivity has become so foundational to campus life that it's easy to look past it. As IT leaders, we focus on the systems and outcomes connectivity enables and overlook the infrastructure itself. This is not because we don't recognize its inherent value. The time and resources we allocate to it every day are evidence that we do. The challenge is that connectivity is actively shaping the mission-based outcomes by which institutions are measured, yet we're not planning for it intentionally.

Getting Inside Institutional Outcomes

The relationship between network infrastructure and institutional results plays out every day, every semester, on every campus. However, the patterns are easy to miss because connectivity sits so far beneath the surface.

IT leaders commonly look to first-line indicators that things aren't working as they should. Dashboards, ticketing, and reports are the common tools of our trade. But it's helpful to view network issues in the context of the outcomes they control.

If a student declines to renew their housing contract because of too many evening Wi-Fi drops, there's a direct impact on revenue. When a researcher loses a day because data transfer speeds can't support a federal grant collaboration, that surfaces as a productivity concern. If an emergency notification doesn't reach a building because coverage is inconsistent, that becomes a safety conversation. All three are fundamental connectivity issues, but they arrive on different desks with different labels.

Moreover, the evidence supports what many of us sense intuitively. Studies analyzing campus Wi-Fi usage data have found associations between how students engage with campus Wi-Fi and academic performance, though results vary by institution and context.^Footnote2 Moody's has noted that institutions unable to offer updated facilities and advanced technology risk losing competitive standing, which can compound enrollment pressures.^Footnote3 Meanwhile, research and education networks such as Internet2 support the high-capacity connectivity used by many institutions, enabling data-intensive collaboration across campuses and research partners.^Footnote4

Bridging the Growing Chasm Between Break-Fix and Strategic Planning

Managing connectivity on a day-to-day basis and planning for it alongside many strategic priorities within an institution are meaningfully different activities. Many of us are understandably focused on the former. The all-encompassing demands of keeping things up and running leave little bandwidth or headspace for long-term strategy development. And the structures around us haven't made the shift easy.

Last year's EDUCAUSE QuickPoll on institutional debt shines light on what many of us already know to be true: network gear and infrastructure are among the most commonly deferred technology investments in U.S. higher education. Forty-six percent of institutions admit making "quick fixes" rather than strategic decisions.^Footnote5 Most campuses are likely to invest in response to a triggering event, such as an equipment failure or building renovation, or when user complaints finally reach a tipping point. Long-range planning rarely enters the picture.

The distinction between the two approaches is worth articulating. In a break-fix model, equipment is replaced when it fails. In a strategic planning model, life-cycle replacement is funded on a predictable schedule: the backbone is refreshed every five to seven years, and wireless access points are updated every two to three years. In a break-fix model, wired and wireless connectivity are managed as discrete operational concerns, whereas in a strategic model, they're planned and governed as a single campus-wide system with consistent standards across every zone.

Most importantly, break-fix is undeniably an IT operations concern. Truly strategic connectivity lives inside institutional governance frameworks. There, it gets the cross-functional oversight it deserves, with connections to facilities planning, the capital budget, and enrollment and retention strategy.

And governance is where real opportunity lives. According to an EDUCAUSE QuickPoll on IT governance, only 35 percent of governance bodies are empowered to make actual decisions, not just recommendations.^Footnote6 When IT governance bodies carry true decision-making authority, institutions rate their effectiveness considerably higher. When no cross-functional body owns connectivity as a strategic focus, it remains operational by default. Governance structure simply hasn't fully evolved to match the role of network infrastructure in realizing critical mission-focused outcomes.

Identifying Where Many Schools Are Falling Behind

The patterns in the data are surprisingly consistent across institutions, regardless of size or type, which is part of what makes them worth examining. Connectivity issues tend to be structural—the kind of gaps that form gradually and persist as they become part of the institutional landscape.

The most common of these is also the easiest to observe: coverage that doesn't exist where people need it. When COVID-19 pushed on-campus instruction outdoors, many campuses discovered that their Wi-Fi coverage didn't extend there. Some built it quickly and made it permanent. Many others did not. In a nationwide survey, 42 percent of administrators rated their outdoor Wi-Fi "somewhat reliable," whereas 57 percent of students at the same schools said it didn't exist at all.^Footnote7 When the disagreement is about whether or not connectivity is even present, we're well past a quality issue.

Residence halls present a similar kind of mismatch, one that intensifies every fall at move-in time. Students arrive with multiple connected devices—from smart lights and sound systems to phones, tablets, and gaming consoles. Adding to the chaos, peak demand falls between midnight and 6 a.m., when most IT staffing is typically minimal. Unsurprisingly, many networks were designed for a previous era of device density. As personal technology improves and bandwidth needs expand, the gap widens between what the network was built for and what it must support.

But a deeper structural issue is contributing to these gaps. Most institutions have built their networks in the same way they've built their campuses—incrementally, one building or project at a time, over decades. The result is a patchwork of equipment generations with no unified standard across residence halls, administrative and academic buildings, research facilities, athletic venues, and outdoor areas. A large share of campus space is decades old.^Footnote8 The networks inside many of them have simply not kept pace.

Finally, IT planning and facilities planning often run on different cycles and with different constraints. When connectivity requirements are not brought into early project conversations, teams can end up revisiting decisions later and absorbing avoidable rework. Better coordination between IT and facilities departments can reduce surprises and help projects stay aligned with academic and operational needs.^Footnote9

Examining the Consequences of Not Planning Strategically

What makes these structural gaps so persistent is that their effects tend to surface in places that don't naturally trace back to connectivity. The costs of these issues are real, but the reasons behind them aren't always fully transparent.

Consider what happens when a major university loses internet access across multiple campuses during the first week of classes. Schedules, email, learning management systems, and financial aid go offline for tens of thousands of students. Events like this reveal how much institutional weight rests on network infrastructure, and how many mission-critical higher education systems are only as reliable as the connectivity enabling them.

Cybersecurity plays a compounding role. Education remains a frequent target for ransomware. In 2024, 66 percent of higher education institutions reported being hit by ransomware in the prior year, and the mean recovery cost was $4.02 million.^Footnote10 An aging, patchwork infrastructure makes defense more difficult. Forty-eight percent of all colleges and universities are running software with known exploited vulnerabilities, and 70 percent of the top 500 institutions.^Footnote11 When discussing cybersecurity strategy, the age and coherence of the underlying network are inherently part of the conversation.

These operational risks are visible, albeit infrequent. The more persistent cost, however, is subtler. When students in a national survey were asked what technology would most enhance their campus experience, 54 percent chose the same answer: reliable Wi-Fi—not AI tools, not new devices, not better software. Students simply want connectivity that works consistently, everywhere on campus. They are telling us what they need from the foundational layer, and they notice when it falls short, even when we believe it's performing well.

That same foundational layer increasingly carries institutional revenue. Major athletics programs connect upward of 50,000 devices on a single game day, supporting everything from mobile ticketing to sponsor activations.^Footnote12 Institutions without high-performance networking face a structural disadvantage in competing for federal research grants. And the financial cost of deferral continues to compound. When projects slip, institutions often face higher costs later, and deferred maintenance is increasingly difficult to unwind over time. The longer we wait, the larger the investment required.

A Closing Thought

As Campus CIO at Boldyn Networks, I work with institutions across the country on campus-wide connectivity—from the wired backbone to the wireless edge. That vantage point admittedly shapes my perspective.

But it also means I have a window into how many campuses are navigating these same challenges, often in isolation and convinced that their situation is unique. It usually isn't. The patterns are shared. And the institutions that are making real progress tend to be those that have moved connectivity out of the IT operations silo and decisively into the institutional-planning conversation.

Boldyn Networks works with colleges and universities across the United States to deliver managed residential and campus network, cloud, IT, and security services. To learn more, explore our virtual campus today.

David Hinson is Campus CIO at Boldyn Networks.

Notes

1. Susan Grajek and the 2022–2023 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel, "Top 10 IT Issues, 2023: Foundational Models," EDUCAUSE Review, October 31, 2022; Susan Grajek and the 2023–2024 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel, "2024 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Institutional Resilience," EDUCAUSE Review, October 16, 2023; Susan Grajek and the 2024–2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust," EDUCAUSE Review, October 23, 2024; Mark McCormack and the 2025–2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel, "2026 EDUCUASE Top 10: Making Connections," EDUCAUSE Review, October 28, 2025.Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. Pedro Ferreira et al.,Wi-Fi Usage on Campus and Students' Academic Performance, (Carnegie Mellon University, October 2023).Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. Sector In-Depth: Higher Education – US: Pent-up Capital Needs: The Hidden Liability with a Hefty Pricetag (Moody's Ratings, August 2024).Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. "Network Partnerships," Internet2, accessed April 16, 2026.Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩
5. Mark McCormack, "EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: The Varied and Compounding Effects of Institutional Debt," EDUCAUSE Review, February 3, 2025.Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.↩
6. Ashley Caron, "EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: Positioning Higher Education IT Governance as a Strategic Function," EDUCAUSE Research Notes, February 21, 2024.Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.↩
7. Cisco Meraki, "Survey Finds That Student and IT Wi-Fi Perceptions Differ,"The Meraki Blog, August 21, 2019.Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.↩
8. State of Facilities in Higher Education, 9th ed. (Gordian, June 2022).Jump back to footnote 8 in the text.↩
9. Michael Hites, "Information Technology Planning," Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) (website).Jump back to footnote 9 in the text.↩
10. Puja Mahendru,"The State of Ransomware in Education 2024," Sophos (website), July 11, 2024.Jump back to footnote 10 in the text.↩
11. Edward Cost,"The State of University Cybersecurity: 3 Major Problems in 2026," UpGuard (blog), January 5, 2026.Jump back to footnote 11 in the text.↩
12. Amanda Mellens, "Upgrading Stadium Wi-Fi Connects Fans to Their Universities,"EdTech Magazine, May 30, 2023.Jump back to footnote 12 in the text.↩