Higher education, like many industries, has already been hit hard.
Schools are seeing a huge reduction in on-campus revenue. Just about every revenue stream is hemorrhaging–including housing, food services, parking, sports and community events. There’s also looming uncertainty around students’ ability to pay tuition due to a sudden loss or reduction of income. Foreign students may not have the ability or desire to return back to school once borders and campuses reopen.
As if that isn’t enough, most states have no choice but to respond to their massive loss in revenue by drastically reducing funding to higher education–some to the tune of 50%.
With all the uncertainty, what can CIOs and IT staff do now, even before they have finalized budgets and plans in place?
Cut the fat now
Cancel expensive site-wide licenses and only pay for the software students actually use. Run the Application Launch History report to see the maximum concurrent usage of each application. You can run this report for a typical week before campuses closed to anticipate what usage might be like when your campus reopens. You can also check usage of remotely accessed software to see how traffic may have changed and anticipate long-term remote use.
Social distancing requires computer workstations to be at least 6 feet apart. For computer labs, classrooms and libraries, that might mean removing or shutting down half of your computers.
Socially distanced computer lab, 50% of computers wasted.
Rather than waste computers or spend precious staff time rearranging rooms, make half your computers available for remote use only.
Socially distanced computer lab with remote users, 100% of computers utilized safely.
Choose flexible solutions
How do you plan out tech resources if you don’t know whether classes will be online, remote, or in person? How do you prepare for the possibility of future campus closures or an on-again-off-again model?
Choose a flexible solution like the Remote Access Dashboard to give students a simple and secure way to connect to campus resources whether they’re on campus or not.
The LabStats Remote Access Dashboard is a dashboard that displays a list of available computers and provides an easy and secure way to remotely log into a computer without any special knowledge needed.
The long term impact of COVID-19 on higher education is unknown, but you can act now to limit the budget impact on your school. With LabStats reports and the Remote Access Dashboard, you can make smart cuts, maximize the hardware you already have, and ensure students have access to campus technology whether they’re on campus or not.
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LabStats specializes in helping IT leaders reduce spend and get their budgets right.
