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Top 5 Focus Areas for Higher Education in 2025

WWT's higher education strategy advisors offer some insight into top takeaways from the 2024 EDUCAUSE Top 10 and how institutions can think about innovations and direction for their tech environments.

In this blog

  1. EDUCAUSE Issue 1: The Data-Empowered Institution
  2. EDUCAUSE Issue 2: Administrative Simplification
  3. EDUCAUSE Issue 4: A Matter of Trust
  4. EDUCAUSE Issue 9: Taming the Digital Jungle
  5. Conclusion

We've selected issues 1, 2, 4, and 9 on EDUCAUSE's 2025 top 10 issues list to explore as our higher education institutions determine the most compelling technology-related priorities in 2025-2026. We offer some thoughts for each one to consider in order to reduce operational friction, increase the momentum of innovation, and create high-value outcomes within our institutions. 

 EDUCAUSE Issue 1: The Data-Empowered Institution

In an era when data is critical to informed decision-making, educational institutions are harnessing their institutional data, analytics and AI to drive student success, enhance student enrollment, secure research funding and reduce institutional inefficiencies. 

Decisions that involve stakeholders across departments, units, schools and teams require visibility to institutional data that is both historical to highlight trends and predictive to anticipate the impacts and outcomes of various influencing factors. What impacts have past decisions had on institutional operations, student enrollment and retention, and research funding successes? What resources are most important to students in which circumstances? What seasonality or timing is important to consider? This highlighted Issue is all about the visibility, availability and accuracy of important data that drives institutional intelligence. 

Various data analytics and AI solutions transform raw data into actionable insights that institutions are using to track student performance, predict outcomes, and tailor interventions to individual student needs. AI-driven tools can also use institutional data to help automate administrative tasks, optimize resource allocation, and enhance decision-making processes. 

 EDUCAUSE Issue 2: Administrative Simplification

Simplification should not be mistaken for always cost-cutting and removing resources. It is about getting work done accurately, efficiently, and with as little waste as possible in the first pass-through. Reducing rework, exception handling, and waste can be the key to creating an efficient, reliable environment where both employees and students trust the outcomes to be consistently high quality. 

Streamlining and modernizing processes, data and technologies is crucial for higher education institutions to operate efficiently and reduce the cost of daily operations. This approach ultimately opens up new opportunities to redirect more budget and staff to student services and programs and reduce pressure on already stretched financial positions.

Digital transformation initiatives help institutions simplify their administrative workflows through the implementation of cutting-edge technology solutions. Cloud solutions enable seamless data integration and access, reduce redundancies and enhance collaboration across departments. By deploying robotic process automation (RPA) – or intelligent automation (IA), institutions can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up staff to focus on more strategic initiatives and knowledge-based work. 
 

 EDUCAUSE Issue 4: A Matter of Trust

Safeguarding privacy and securing institutional data is paramount in today's digital age. The location and transmission paths of data are as varied as the devices that create and consume this data. Enterprise-level systems, desktop machines, cloud-based digital tools, and unstaffed research instruments are just a few examples of the places where data can be created, modified, stored, transmitted and destroyed. The set of users with differing levels of authorization to access this data is just as diverse as the set of devices they use. Ensuring that the data within an institutional environment is protected from vulnerabilities and "bad actors" is balanced with ensuring that the appropriate set of users have the appropriate level of access for the highest integrity purposes within the timing needed to complete important tasks. 

Cybersecurity solutions and world-class security expertise are designed to protect sensitive institutional information, research intellectual property, and maintain the trust of students, faculty, staff, and a wide-reaching set of constituents. Security frameworks encompass threat detection, incident response, and data encryption, ensuring that institutions are well-equipped to handle cyber threats. Zero-trust architecture approach further enhances security by verifying every user and device attempting to access the network. Institutions can develop robust data governance policies and implement advanced security measures, thereby safeguarding their digital assets and maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements which is critical to maintaining institutional integrity and funding.
 

 EDUCAUSE Issue 9: Taming the Digital Jungle

Updating and unifying digital infrastructure and governance is essential for increasing institutional efficiency and effectiveness. As the number of applications and systems within an institution increases, cybersecurity practices, operational processes and administrative tasks, staff training and required knowledge, and infrastructure environments become more complex.

  • Increased Attack Surface: More applications and systems mean more potential entry points for attackers. Each new system or application can introduce vulnerabilities that need to be identified and mitigated.
  • Diverse Technologies: Different applications and systems often use different technologies, platforms, and protocols. This diversity requires a broader range of security measures and expertise to manage effectively.
  • Interdependencies: As systems and applications become more interconnected, the potential impact of a security breach can spread across multiple systems. Ensuring that all interdependencies are secure adds to the complexity.
  • Data Management: More applications and systems typically mean more data to protect. Ensuring data integrity, confidentiality, and availability across a larger and more complex environment requires robust data management and encryption practices.
  • Access Control: Managing user access and permissions becomes more challenging as the number of systems increases. Implementing and maintaining effective identity and access management (IAM) solutions is critical to ensure that only authorized users have access to sensitive information.
  • Compliance and Regulations: With more systems and applications, ensuring compliance with various industry standards and regulations (such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc.) becomes more complex. Each system may have different compliance requirements that need to be addressed.
  • Monitoring and Incident Response: Monitoring a larger number of systems for potential security incidents requires more sophisticated tools and processes. Incident response plans must be comprehensive and capable of addressing threats across a wide range of systems.
  • Patch Management: As the number of systems grows, keeping all systems and applications up to date with the latest security patches becomes more challenging. Effective patch management processes are essential to mitigate vulnerabilities.
  • Resource Allocation: More systems and applications require more resources (time, personnel, budget) to secure. Allocating these resources efficiently while maintaining a high level of security can be difficult.
  • Third-Party Risks: As organizations integrate more third-party applications and services, they must also manage the security risks associated with these external providers. Ensuring that third-party vendors adhere to security best practices adds another layer of complexity.

Universities and college leaders recognize the important work that is necessary to simplify their institution's digital portfolio in order to bring simplicity and efficiency to their efforts. 

Digital infrastructure solutions provide a solid foundation for modernizing IT environments. Network modernization services ensure that institutions have the bandwidth and connectivity needed to support advanced applications and services. Cloud migration strategies enable institutions to leverage scalable and flexible cloud platforms, reducing the burden on on-premises infrastructure. Application rationalization and IT governance frameworks help institutions establish clear policies and procedures for managing digital assets, ensuring that technology investments align with institutional goals. As such, institutions can create a cohesive, efficient, and future-ready IT environment.
 

 Conclusion

By empowering your institutions with data-driven insights, streamlining administrative processes, safeguarding privacy and modernizing digital infrastructure, you can help your higher education institution navigate current and future complexities. Using industry AI expertise and innovative exploratory labs, institutions can explore and make informed decisions about how best to incorporate AI, intelligent automation, and analytics work into achieving their institutional missions. 

Reference: https://www.educause.edu/research-and-publications/research/top-10-it-issues-technologies-and-trends/2025