EDUCAUSE 2025 Top 10 IT Issues — AI/data ranked

EDUCAUSE's 2025 Top 10 IT Issues report lists AI and data as the #1 institutional issue, framed as "The Data-Empowered Institution — using data, analytics, and AI to drive student success, enrollment, research funding, and operational efficiency." Continuity check: the 2024 edition of the same report identified the same data/analytics/AI cluster as the lead institutional concern, establishing that this is not a single-year ranking artifact but the dominant institutional priority across both years.

For C-0038: EDUCAUSE's Top 10 IT Issues is the most widely consulted institutional-priority survey in higher-education IT and reflects the aggregated judgment of CIOs and senior IT leadership across U.S. higher education. Its placement of AI/data at the top, sustained year-over-year, is direct evidence that AI is not a peripheral or aspirational priority but the operational center of 2026 institutional IT strategy.