This year’s EDUCAUSE opened with a rush of higher ed leaders and practitioners on the Nashville Music City Center exhibition floor — scanning booths, comparing notes and exploring solutions for campus challenges. Notably, the conversations were less about adding more tools and more about the radical, behind-the-scenes work of simplifying the experience. The core question on everyone’s mind wasn’t, “Should we modernize?” but “How do we orchestrate a unified digital experience across the entire institution?”
As one attendee put it, “Higher ed is finally grasping that the user experience and back-end data architecture are two sides of the same coin. The institutions making serious headway on the digital experience are the ones rethinking both layers simultaneously — and bringing cross-functional teams to the table on day one.”
Beneath the surface buzz, the industry’s focus crystallized around one bold idea: The future demands more than technology — it requires a unified strategy designed entirely around the end user.
This shift aligns perfectly with the 2026 EDUCAUSE Top 10 issues, presented on the second day of the conference. These five strategic takeaways from the conference floor go beyond the headlines and reveal the urgency of a unified approach.
1. Enrollment Risk and Digital Clutter — A New Financial Imperative
The days of chasing quick-fix technology purchases end now. This year’s EDUCAUSE conference made clear that budget-conscious IT leaders treat the digital experience as a strategic financial asset, directly linking system fragmentation to enrollment and retention risk.
This shift establishes return on investment (ROI) as the new standard. Institutions today demand platforms providing system consolidation and promoting lifecycle-long engagement — not single-purpose solutions. Siloed data and systems obscure the true cost and effectiveness of enrollment efforts, creating a “black box” of information. To solve this, institutions must achieve a single, trusted source of engagement data for confident decision-making — a core effort reflected in the Data Analytics for Operational and Financial Insights theme.
As Pathify’s VP of Sales, Mike Brouwer, noted, “Clearly higher education is embracing this ‘Netflix’ moment and rising to the occasion, with the campus experience as the focus point.” This extends beyond making things look pretty — it addresses the business crisis poor user experience creates.
2. Cybersecurity Now Presents a User Experience Problem
IT leaders at EDUCAUSE acknowledged the biggest security risk comes not from an external attack — but from a frustrated user creating a risky workaround or ignoring training because the system causes pain. Security and user experience no longer pose separate concerns.
This makes the Collaborative Cybersecurity theme so urgent. Security measures must integrate into the daily workflow, not layer on top. Consolidating multiple systems behind a unified digital front door reduces the attack surface, simplifies compliance and makes basic security practices like multi-factor authentication less cumbersome for students and staff.
Plus, with AI adoption soaring, the Knowledge Management for Safer AI theme remains crucial — the safety of AI equates to the quality of its training data. Unifying data governance and knowledge management ensures AI tools stay accurate and grounded in validated institutional policies, increasing trust and mitigating risk.
3. The “Human Edge of AI” Requires a Unified Digital Foundation
The discussion on AI moved past, “Should we use it?” to “How do we govern the use of it?” This critical shift means every student, faculty member and staff member now operates as an individual technology decision-maker.
The challenge defined by The Human Edge of AI lies in orchestration. As users adopt “bring-your-own-AI” (BYOAI) tools, the institution must provide a supportive, unified platform connecting these tools seamlessly and safely, transforming individual capability into institutional strength.
This depends entirely on the theme of Building a Data-Centric Culture Across the Institution. Siloed data makes success impossible — and a unified platform acts as the essential de-siloing agent, bringing disparate data sources together to provide a complete institutional picture for safer AI deployment and better strategic planning.
4. A Proactive Shift: Designing for the Student
A prevailing sentiment at EDUCAUSE emerged — IT teams must stop reacting to student needs and start proactively designing for student outcomes. This requires abandoning legacy systems built around administrative needs and adopting platforms built around the student’s personal journey.
The goal, highlighted by the From Reactive to Proactive theme, centers on anticipating the need. Instead of using data only to describe the past, institutions leverage predictive data to surface personalized notifications and resources before a student realizes they need them. This strategy ties directly to Technology Literacy for the Future Workforce. The best way to teach digital fluency — a requirement for 92% of US jobs — involves providing a student experience reflecting the personalized, modern and seamless tools they will encounter in their professional careers.
As Nathan Eatherton, CIO of Columbia College, shared, “We need to be really intentional in defining what success looks like around the student experience.” This intention manifests in a platform guiding the student through their specific journey.
5. The Solution: Collaboration (Not Just Tech)
Throughout 2025’s EDUCAUSE conference, a consistent theme emerged — technology alone falls short in tackling the challenges presented by today’s higher ed landscape. Instead, success hinges on breaking down the historical silos between IT, Student Affairs, Admissions and Academics.
The EDUCAUSE 2026 report emphasizes the most successful digital transformations stem from cross-functional teams from day one. The strategic platform acts as the component forcing this collaboration, connecting data and communication across all silos to establish shared values and standards. By simplifying the administrative burden and providing a unified tool, the institution empowers staff and faculty (the Collective Will and Individual Capabilities themes running throughout) to spend less time troubleshooting and more time on high-value, human-centered work.
The Future Begins Now
The conference made one thing clear — the future begins now, defined by a unified, user-centric strategy. The challenge now lies in organization, not technology — cultivating the collective will to unify data, streamline security and retire the legacy thinking putting the system before the campus community.
The optimism feels real because the strategic framework to orchestrate this change finally exists.
Ready to move from, “Should we modernize?” to “How do we orchestrate a unified experience?”
Click here to learn more about Pathify’s Campus Experience Platform (CXP).