Why Campus Network Infrastructure Is Mission-Critical for Higher Education
Proof that campus networks are mission-critical surfaced recently when the Canvas breach impacted students taking final exams. Across higher education, institutions suddenly found themselves scrambling. Students were locked out of coursework. And what looked like a software outage quickly became a campuswide disruption.
Schools ground to a halt. If the network isn’t robust and things aren’t working, everything from physical security access to lighting controls, heating and cooling, and plumbing systems is controlled via network capabilities.
How Higher Education IT Infrastructure Impacts Enrollment and Reputation
When a core system fails, schools don’t just experience an IT problem. Teaching stalls. Student services slow down. Confidence in the institution can take a hit, which can also impact reputation, institutional competitiveness and enrollment from prospective students.
If an interested student steps onto campus for a tour and faces broken guest Wi-Fi or lagging portals, that negative first impression undercuts a higher ed institution’s recruitment pipeline before students even apply — if they still want to.
LEARN MORE: An expert explains why higher ed classroom tech is an enrollment strategy.
The timing and quality of a school’s first meaningful interaction with a student heavily impacts downstream enrollment choices. Students who experience early, frictionless affinity-building are significantly more likely to follow through and enroll, according to education firm EAB’s Enrollment Insights report.
If you get a reputation for having outdated, antiquated equipment or a poor network experience, that information is going to travel quickly among students and potential students. It spreads through social media group chats and peer recommendations faster than a marketing campaign can counter.
A Phased Approach to Campus Infrastructure Refresh
And whether students are already enrolled or stepping on campus for their first day, the average student is coming to campus with seven or eight devices that all require internet connectivity. Strong, reliable internet connection is presumed to be a given. Students also expect that they won’t have to constantly join different networks when traveling between buildings or otherwise outside.
Each additional smartphone, tablet and student-owned laptop expands the attack surface and security vulnerabilities.
Moving to a zero-trust posture keeps the campus network and devices safe by requiring additional levels of authentication. While nothing is infallible, this means going an extra step further to make sure users are who they say they are. And if a password does get leaked, there’s a secondary layer of backup or security.
READ MORE: Being thoughtful about the “why” when it comes to network upgrades matters.
When it comes to maintaining modernization, one of the biggest mistakes that we see is applying upgrades to fix a very specific problem without tying it to a broader strategy for innovation. Patching the thing that broke rather than zooming out puts IT teams in a posture of having to constantly repair rather than moving forward.
Every dollar goes to the most recent emergency instead of linking fixes to broader, proactive strategies for innovation and planning. IT leaders who can develop a holistic plan that is tied to their institution’s overarching technology roadmap are best positioned to get out of that loop.
Refreshing is a never-ending process, especially with the way that technology cycles are structured. The goal isn’t to reach a finished state, because one doesn’t exist. Instead, a phased approach that includes a comprehensive understanding of the infrastructure and scheduled refreshes of the most pressing components supports the network — and the student experience by extension.
