Key points:
- With the right steps, higher ed can embrace innovation and rebuild trust
- 5 ways to forge genuine connections with modern learners
- Data-informed decision-making in education: A comprehensive approach
- For more news on EDUCAUSE, visit eCN’s Live@EDUCAUSE hub
Higher education has a trust problem. This blunt–but true–statement is the guiding idea behind the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10, which narrows in on higher ed’s biggest list of challenges and to-dos for the coming year.
During EDUCAUSE’s 2025 live and online conference, Susan Grajek, EDUCAUSE’s Vice President for Partnerships, Communities and Research, reviewed 2025’s top 10 issues, offering insight from higher-ed leaders and a look at where to go from here.
“[The Top 10 is] not just a list–it’s a roadmap for the way technology and data can help leaders navigate the complexity of higher education’s priorities and challenges in the coming year,” Grajek said.
The 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 highlights how technology and data leaders in the higher-ed sector can address the industry’s biggest challenge of all: rebuilding trust, which includes building competent institutions, fostering caring institutions, and leveraging the fulcrum of leadership.
The panel developed these 10 issues based on upcoming priorities and challenges higher-ed leaders said would be most important for 2025:
10. Supportable, sustainable, affordable: Developing an institutional strategy for new technology investments, pilots, policies, and uses. “We are in an era of rapid technological advancement. It’s incredible how fast innovation is moving,” Grajek said. “We need to quickly and carefully keep up. We need to evaluate which of these technologies to adopt.”
A well-thought-out innovation strategy can bring immense, even transformational, benefits–like making education more affordable, enhancing the student and staff experience, and staying competitive. Hurdles include change fatigue, budget constraints, and complex institutional politics. Executive leaders must trust one another to reach institutional goals.
10. (tie) Building bridges, not walls: Increasing digital access for students while also safeguarding their privacy and data protection. “Colleges and universities are caught in a balancing act–how do we expand student’s access to digital resources while also protecting their privacy and data?” Grajek asked. Giving students more digital access is empowering. It lets them take more control over their education, which can improve completion rates. It also helps institutions address grooving digital divide. If we give students ownership of their data and tools to manage their digital content, we’re not just preparing them for education, we’re helping them build a digital brand they can take to future employers.
This requires a holistic campus-wide strategy. IT leaders play a critical role here, helping shape strategies to modernize digital architecture while prioritizing privacy and data protection. Keys to progress include collaboration and interoperability frameworks.
9. Taming the digital jungle: Updating and unifying digital infrastructure and governance to increase institutional efficiency and effectiveness. “Many institutions are dealing with an array of digital tools and systems that just keeps growing. It’s creating a digital jungle that hampers efficiency and effectiveness,” Grajek said.
Updating and unifying digital infrastructure services and governance helps free up valuable time and resources, redirecting to areas that matter most–teaching, learning, research, scholarship. An overabundance of digital tools is an asset management challenge. Keys to progress include setting the foundations for transformation, creating a culture of innovation and adaptability, and active community participation.
8. Putting people first: Helping staff adapt, upskill, and thrive in an era of rapid change and ongoing digital advancements. “In higher ed, competing on salary isn’t always possible, but what we can do is create a positive work culture and invest in our staff and use those as selling points,” Grajek noted. “Leaders need to prioritize staff development, create a workplace where people actually want to be, connect staff to the institution’s mission, and encourage collaboration.”
When staff trust their workplace, they’re more engaged, productive, and loyal. Every staff member should feel their work supports the institution’s mission. Keys to progress include building a culture of trust and knowing that people are your most valuable asset.
7. Faster, better, AND cheaper: Using technology to personalize services, automate work, and increase agility. “Personalization uses data to tailor and support learning experiences, which can improve student engagement and outcomes. AI and other technologies can help automate work. By adopting flexible technologies and building strong partnerships with vendors, institutions can become more adaptable, adjusting to changes quickly,” Grajek said. But this all requires good data to help leaders make strategic, hard choices that balance financial goals with broader goals, like improving outcomes. Keys to progress include collaboration across the entire ecosystem and corporations reframing their approach to higher education.
6. Institutional resilience: Contributing to institutional efforts to prepare for and address a growing number and range of risks. “Institutional resilience is more important than ever. Leaders need to anticipate threats, develop mitigation strategies, and involve the entire institution,” Grajek noted.
Technology and data leaders can help avoid tech-related disasters and work with institutional leaders to develop and rehearse business continuity and disaster plans. Keys to progress include learning from small incidents and looking for early signals of change.
5. The CIO challenge: Leading digital strategy and operations in an era of frequent leadership transitions, resource limitations, societal unrest, and rapid technology advancements. “CIOs unlock institutional potential and they do that by contributing to institutional agility, creating room for innovation, and aligning tech strategy with broader organizational goals. Success comes when CIOs build radical partnerships with other leaders, seizing opportunities and even crises to push forward projects that have stalled,” Grajek outlined.
Keys to progress include building a culture of trust by strengthening relationships, connecting institutional strategies to IT strategies, and striving for transparency.
4. A matter of trust: Advancing institutional strategies to safeguard privacy and secure institutional data. “There’s growing pressure to safeguard data and privacy, but we need to do that without removing the openness and collaboration that make higher ed thrive,” Grajek observed.
Framing these efforts as building trust can help regain public confidence. This helps maintain federal funding that depends on compliance, can attract and retain students, and improves data flows and access. Keys to progress include a standard for demonstrating trustworthiness, agreeing on the importance of data, cybersecurity, and privacy, and sharing solutions and staff with other institutions.
3. Smoothing the student journey: Using technology and data to improve and personalize student services. “Student services are shifting from reactive transactional support to proactive relational support that focuses on student success as much as on administrative effectiveness,” Grajek said.
When this work is done well, more students can succeed, and recruitment and enrollment can see a boost. This requires a holistic view of cross-organizational processes and data flows. Keys to progress include finding strong external partners and focusing on change management from the very start.
2. Administrative simplification: Streamlining and modernizing processes, data, and technologies. Institutions are adopting modern ERPs and administrative solutions to simplify work and use data effectively. “This isn’t just about technology–it’s about changing process and culture and giving the workforce the time and resources to adapt. Institutional leadership needs to be engaged, informed, and aligned. [Leaders] need to understand what drives value, what success looks like, and be ready to address obstacles.”
Keys to progress include understanding what the new system is capable of and involving the community deeply.
1. The data-empowered institution: Using data, analytics, and AI to increase student success, win the enrollment race, increase research funding, and reduce inefficiencies. “With enrollment challenges and budget constraints, data-driven decision-making has become essential. Leaders need solid evidence to decide which investments will make the biggest impacts for students and the institution,” Grajek said.
Data and key performance indicators can help decision makers get on the same page about what’s working well and where more investment is needed. Keys to progress include get the right staffing and skills and invest in professional development and cross training.
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