Top Ten IT Issues in Higher Education

Which IT issue is of top concern among higher education technology leaders? Based on its Current Issues Survey, Educause Review has published this year's list of "Top-Ten IT Issues, 2007".

1. Funding IT
2. Security
3. Administrative/ERP/Information Systems
4. Identity/Access Management
5. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
6. Faculty Development, Support, and Training
7. Infrastructure
8. Strategic Planning
9. Course/Learning Management Systems
10. Governance, Organization, and Leadership for IT
    
    

The accompanying article by John S. Camp, Peter B. Deblois, and the Educause 2007 Current Issues Committee is worth a read. It outlines some of the key questions CIOs are struggling with in each area.

No surprises here except Course/Learning Management Systems makes its first appearance in the top ten list.  The Current Issues Committee speculate on the uptick in interest:

"Possibly spurred by concerns over the Blackboard/WebCT merger and Blackboard's patent suit, as well as the continuing maturity of open-source options, Course/Learning Management Systems (C/LMSs) have appeared for the first time among the top-ten issues facing higher education CIOs. It may also be the case, as suggested in the beginning of this article, that this visibility can be attributed to the evolution of C/LMS technology as a mission-critical enterprise system, to its accelerating use as a critical teaching and learning resource by institutions of all kinds, and to the technology's impact on IT funding, in terms of both licensing and local support."