My favorite quote from the 2011 EDUCAUSE National Conference came from Marty Ringle of Reed College (as tweeted by @stevegoldenberg):
No student will come to our school b/c of our amazing administrative computing environment
True. And yet, we spend an awful lot of time (and money, and resources) focused on our IT infrastructures, enterprise systems, and other “back office” technologies. Why? Because without question, some/most/all of these systems are absolutely critical to running our institutions — without them we have no class schedules, or student records, or…well, you get the picture.
But here’s the thing: while these systems are clearly mission-critical to our operations, they are not *core* to our institutions. They are not technologies/services that we uniquely can provide. They do not differentiate our institutions from one another. And, perhaps most importantly, they do not (significantly) advance our primary mission of educating students. And yet, we *must* provide them.
Or must we??
Some guy named Rae... 