Not too many universities and colleges have an optimistic view of 2010. It’s shaping up to be a year (and more) of budget cuts and frugality. Unlike businesses – which are immediately impacted by financial downturns – governments feel financial pain when tax revenue drops (usually 6+ months after downturns). Universities are impacted only after governments begin grappling with new budgets. As a result, higher education feels financial pain a year or so after the rest of society. And that’s when the cuts start. Unfortunately, during periods of downturn, more students are enrolling in university…at exactly the same time that universities are dealing with cuts.
Lev Gonick looks ahead to 2010 and presents a fairly bleak picture for IT:
The new normal carries the contradictions of both a fragile macro-economic recovery and a countervailing trend of only modest increases in enrollment and new federal research investments predicted for the fall of 2010 (with the important exception of the community college environment). The new normal is less financial leverage and smaller investments in core infrastructure, including IT on campus, even though the price of borrowing money has never been lower. The new normal is more and faster disruption to the consumer technology eco-system at the same time that levels of investment in our aging IT enterprise infrastructure decline in both real and relative terms.
On a positive note – times of change are ideal for transformation as well. Universities will be more inclined to consider new approaches and innovations when there is a compelling need for change.