The Economic Downturn and the Future of Higher Education IT: Executive Appraisals

Abstract

This ECAR occasional paper reports the results of a real-time Delphi study conducted in conjunction with the 2010 ECAR study of the impact of the economic downturn on higher education IT, Responding to Recession: IT Funding and Cost Management in Higher Education. The "main study" followed ECAR's traditional methodology, including a broadly distributed survey and telephone interviews with a subset of the survey respondents. In addition to the main study’s quantitative information, ECAR also wanted to help IT administrators leverage practices from institutions that had successfully adapted to these new conditions. Furthermore, to address the commonly voiced opinion that traditional responses to riding out a recession would not suffice under these circumstances, we wanted to take a future-oriented look at the impact of the economic downturn on higher education IT and see whether leaders in the field were in fact viewing this downturn as a game-changing moment, or just a bump in the road. We therefore chose to gather information and opinions from a group of industry leaders who could provide future-looking insights based on their experience at their own institutions and their understanding of broader industry trends. This occasional paper reports the result of the Delphi study.

Citation for this work: Voloudakis, John. The Economic Downturn and the Future of Higher Education IT: Executive Appraisals (Occasional Paper 1, 2010). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.