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New research from CDW reveals insights from AI experts and IT leaders.

Aug 14 2025
Management

Putting In the Work to Retain Higher Education IT Staff

Job rotation, ongoing training and attentive bosses can help university employees fend off burnout.

Higher education IT departments have historically reported a lack of qualified staff and trouble retaining qualified staff. As IT staffers gain experience and certifications, they are often lured away from higher education by the private sector — or they face burnout from the workload of higher ed. This is particularly true in cybersecurity roles.

In the CDW Cybersecurity Research Report, 38% of education respondents said sufficient understanding of staffing needs is missing from their organizations’ approach to cybersecurity, the most common response on the list. Only 10% of respondents considered themselves fully staffed.

Click the banner below to see the full results of CDW’s cybersecurity research report.

 

In June, EDUCAUSE released its 2025 Cybersecurity and Privacy Workforce in Higher Education study, which confirms that higher ed cybersecurity teams tend to be overworked and understaffed. Only 21% of respondents said their unit has enough staff to meet its goals, while 68% reported excessive workloads. Despite these statistics, nearly a third of respondents said their institutions have not taken actions to address their workloads.

Buck Bell, head of CDW’s Global Security Strategy Office, says there are some things organizations can do to improve job satisfaction among cybersecurity staffers.

“Everybody wants to feel like they’re contributing. They want to feel like their work matters,” he says. “Things such as job rotation can help, putting people into roles to let them gain additional experience. Putting together a training strategy can help them develop their own careers. Finding the right mix between human factors and automation is important.”

Daniel Garcia/Theispot