Study: Campuses lack mobile and BYOD policies, despite concerns


76 percent of CIOs who responded to a survey said their university has no BYOD policy in place.

Three quarters of university chief information officers say that the importance of mobility and bring your own device (BYOD) has increased in the last year, but just as many say their institutions have no BYOD policies in place, according to a report by Education Dive.

The report, which was underwritten by Sprint Higher Education Solutions, was based on a survey of 50 CIOs from around the United States and examined the policies, obstacles and successes of universities adopting mobile devices on their campuses.

When the respondents were asked if their institutions had BYOD policies, only 24 percent said they did. 76 percent admitted to having no BYOD policy in place. But the surge of students bringing their own devices to campuses in recent years is a major concern for the 74 percent of CIOs who noted that BYOD was weighing heavier on administrators’ minds.

“We suspected that BYOD trends are a big deal in IT departments, and the CIO answers we received confirmed that assumption,” the study’s authors said.

The results highlight a growing gap between the level of concern felt by CIOs and information technology employees and the steps universities are willing, or able, to take to address those issues.

See Page 2 for what about BYOD has CIOs so concerned. 

Sixty percent of those surveyed said mobile security had them most concerned, with 20 percent citing scalability as a pressing issue.

In a similar survey released earlier this year by the Association of Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, more than 60 percent of respondents said they were worried about their ability to match the demands of the ballooning number of mobile devices coming to campuses, but only 40 percent said they had a plan for mitigating that growth.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said they expected network costs to rise, but less than 40 expected their budgets to rise accordingly.

The Education Dive survey also asked CIOs about what kinds of mobile devices their schools used. The most popular device seemed to be Apple’s iPad, with 72 percent of respondents saying the tablet was in use on their campus.

Apple’s iPhone was close behind at 60 percent. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they used Adroid phones.

Sixty two percent of the CIOs indicated that they were provided with a tablet or smartphone by their institution.

“It’s worth noting that the iPhone is less popular than the iPad,” the authors said, “which may be a reflection of the iPad’s classroom and administrative uses in the education space.”

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