Beyond Numbers: How Leaders Should Really Read the 2025 EDUCAUSE Student Tech Report
Executive Brief: The Real Lessons for Campus and EdTech Leaders
The 2025 EDUCAUSE report is everywhere this year—but if you’re reading it just for new tools or “AI adoption” stats, you’re missing the point. The data paints a much deeper, more urgent story about what students feel, where they get stuck, and why small choices compound across the institution.
Here are the five lessons that matter most for leaders who want to move the needle this year:
1. Dignity and Belonging: Still Not Solved
Despite record spending, nearly a third of students still experience digital exclusion—especially those from low-income, rural, and first-generation backgrounds.
“The gap is no longer just about bandwidth or devices—it’s about whether students feel they’re on a level playing field, every day.”
2. Student Friction Is the Enemy of Engagement
Most leaders obsess over what tech to add. Students care far more about what gets in their way: assignment upload glitches, slow help desk responses, clunky groupwork tools.
Actionable Insight: The best investment is often in removing the “paper cuts” that kill confidence and momentum, not adding shiny new features.
3. Solve the Few Problems that Cause Most Pain
Not every pain point is equal. The data shows a handful of issues—help access, group project logistics, and assignment upload—account for the majority of student frustration.
Actionable Insight: Direct 80% of your improvement budget at the 20% of problems that cause most stress.
4. Confidence Does Not Equal Competence—Especially with GenAI
Students report high comfort with AI tools, but actual digital and ethical literacy trails behind—especially for new or first-year students. Overconfidence here is dangerous.
Actionable Insight: If you only focus on “access,” you’ll widen the gap between confident dabblers and genuinely empowered students.
5. Small Wins Compound Across the System
One faster login, one clearer help button, one fix to groupwork software—it might seem trivial, but these micro-improvements add up quickly. The first five fixes move the needle more than the next twenty features.
Actionable Insight: Make small wins visible, and empower every team to fix one small barrier each month.
What This Means for Leaders
Make dignity and inclusion the lens for every digital investment.
If any group reports higher rates of exclusion, you still have work to do.Track friction, not just features.
Measure where students struggle most. Set targets to reduce friction, not just add new apps.Double down on the highest-impact problems.
Fix the few issues that cause most of the complaints.Don’t confuse comfort with competence.
Give students deep, ethical AI literacy—not just new logins.Celebrate and systematize marginal gains.
The best teams chase dozens of tiny improvements, not just the next big project.
Closing: The Leadership Mindset Shift
The real opportunity isn’t “AI everywhere” or a bigger LMS—it’s a relentless focus on invisible barriers, real student stories, and continuous, small improvements.
The leaders who make the biggest impact will be those who treat every friction removed as a win, every voice heard as data, and every student as a user deserving dignity, ease, and growth.
If your decisions make it easier for the least advantaged student to thrive, you’re building the right future.
Source: https://www.educause.edu/content/2025/students-and-technology-report
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