Deloitte’s 2024 Higher Education Trends report highlights five key areas of change: the shifting value proposition from completion to outcomes, the evolving landscape of college athletics, the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence, the growing importance of public-private partnerships and the leadership crisis facing higher education institutions.
Megan Cluver, a principal of higher education for Deloitte Consulting, said Americans increasingly want schools to demonstrate tangible outcomes from their programs, not just completion rates. This has elevated the importance of data-driven decision-making, with CIOs playing a crucial role in providing the analytics and insights to support this strategic shift.
Analytics are also playing a key role in adjusting institutional budgets to accommodate changes in college athletics. The potential for college athletes to receive compensation through their name, image and likeness (NIL) can have far-reaching impacts on institutional budgets, and CIOs can offer valuable insights on these effects.
“This has huge implications for things like NIL, booster group influence, changes in athletic conference alignment,” Andrea Ballinger, CIO at Oregon State University, said. “It’s prompting a lot of discussions about the role of athletes.”
Additionally, artificial intelligence is changing both the operational and academic sides of higher education. Ballinger suggested a multifaceted approach to AI, including educating stakeholders, automating administrative tasks and exploring economic development opportunities. However, she cautioned that the fear of AI must be met head-on as institutions grapple with the potential for job displacement. She was honest that some jobs may be replaced by AI in the future, but said it is an institution’s responsibility to train employees on other necessary skills to fill in emerging workforce gaps. Education is key to ensuring that those employees are on board with this change, she said.
“It’s our opportunity to educate, bring people along, provide the information and real knowledge that refutes some of the other knowledge that is out there, some of the myths,” she said.
Sharon Pitt, vice president of information technology and chief information officer at Virginia Tech, said higher education institutions are uniquely positioned to safely explore the boundaries of AI, drawing on the expertise of their research faculty.
In addition to internal expertise, public-private partnerships can offer external expertise. Pitt said insights from the private sector can help shape a school’s value proposition, and CIOs play a critical role in navigating these complex relationships and ensuring that technology-enabled services align with institutional priorities.
Underpinning all of these trends is the leadership crisis in higher education, with rapidly accelerating turnover among university presidents and other senior leaders. The panelists emphasized the need for CIOs to build trust and provide a data-driven framework to help new leaders understand the progress and priorities of the IT organization, ensuring continuity and momentum during these transitions.
“Start to build the data story now and then continue to build on it,” Cluver said. “So, when the leadership transition happens, you’re bringing a robust framework to the conversation.”
As higher education navigates an era of unprecedented change, the CIO’s position has evolved from a technology specialist to a strategic partner. Ballinger said that if CIOs are not already being included in important conversations across the institution, they should make their way in.
“Waiting for an invitation may not be the key here,” she said. “Our accountability is to be there, to be providing the institution the options, the art of possibilities, what can be done through the fear of it all.”
