Higher Education's 2018 Trend Watch and Top 10 Strategic Technologies

Abstract

This report focuses on the widespread trends and emerging technologies influencing higher education institutions. Trends are pervasive external factors that influence institutional and IT strategy and often shape the adoption of technologies. This report examines the trends that institutions are paying the most attention to and that are influencing emerging institutional IT strategy the most. This year’s trend list included 39 items.

Technologies are what IT organizations do. Mature, commonly deployed technologies (such as financial information systems or networks) may be among the most mission-critical technologies, but they are generally more likely to receive operational than strategic attention.  Strategic technologies, by contrast, are the relatively new technologies institutions will be spending the most time implementing, planning for, and tracking in 2018. None of the 73 technologies analyzed in this research is currently in place in more than 30% of institutions.

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