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2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust
Higher education has a trust problem. In the past ten years, the share of Americans who are confident in higher education has dropped from 57 percent to 36 percent.
Colleges and universities need to show that they understand and care about students, faculty, staff, and community members, AND they need to work efficiently and effectively.
Technology leaders can help. The 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 describes how higher education technology and data leaders and professionals can help to restore trust in the sector by building
competent and caring institutions and, through radical collaboration, leverage the
fulcrum of leadership to maintain balance between the two.
Back by popular demand: Get QuickTakes on how you can make progress on the Top 10 and examples of how your peers are tackling the Top 10 at their institutions.
Infographic: Restoring Trust
The Competent Institution
Competence is an essential component of trust. The competence of the IT organization is on the line in 2025, as technology professionals collaborate to retool their institutions.
The Caring Institution
Trust in institutions stems from trust in the people at the institution, and that trust needs to be earned. Focus needs to be on increasing institutional effectiveness and on improving people’s experiences with technology and making those experiences safe, secure, and easy to access.
The Fulcrum of Leadership
Building an institution that is both competent and caring is a balancing act. Increased
institutional efficiency and effectiveness may come at the expense of student support,
staffing levels, or benefits. Balance may look stationary, but it’s actually quite dynamic.
What People are Talking About
View the Shop Talk podcast video recorded live at the 2025 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference with Susan Grajek and guests, featuring the biggest questions about this year’s Top 10.
Explore Susan Grajek’s EDUCAUSE Annual Conference General Session presentation of the Top 10 (PDF)
What Industry Partners are Talking About
We sat down with CDW, Gartner, and Jenzabar to get their insights and recommendations on the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 and the challenges facing higher education. Explore the corporate perspectives below.
- CDW interview with Joe Simone, Vice President of Education at CDW
- Gartner interview with Terri-Lynn Thayer, Managing Vice President, Education Research, at Gartner
- Jenzabar interview with Chris Morgan, Associate Vice President of Innovation at Jenzabar
How the Top 10 Are Selected
Once a year, members of the EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel select a slate of 15–20 topics they believe will be the most important technology issues facing higher education institutions. EDUCAUSE members receive a survey with those topics and are asked to prioritize them. The 10 issues with the highest-priority scores become the EDUCAUSE Top 10.