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Sometimes I worry that I lean too heavily on surveys in this weekly post. After all, it’s not called Interesting Surveys I Read This Week. This is one of those times. So, which surveys caught my eye and are worth sharing?
Mind the gap
Advisory and investment firm KordaMentha has released its annual report on higher education in Australia, offering fascinating insights into how universities are approaching current challenges and technology more broadly. The report draws on annual financial reports from Australian universities (I wish US institutions were required to publish similarly structured and accessible documents) as well as a survey of CFOs and COOs. While the sample size is small — Australia has only 43 universities —the insights are widely applicable.
Like their counterparts around the world, Australian universities face a range of challenges. Some are financial, while others relate to factors such as enrollment, but together they are creating significant budgetary pressures.
Cost-cutting will clearly be a priority for universities going forward, and it’s interesting to see how prominently technology features in these plans, at least according to the 21 CFOs who responded to the survey.
The report notes that efforts to increase revenue from other sources are likely to face limitations, given realities such as regulatory changes and demographics. However, roughly a third of respondents (35%) said they are focusing on expanding online learning beyond traditional student populations and exploring new product opportunities such as microcredentials (30%) to drive revenue growth.
Given the central role of technology in addressing financial challenges, I was struck by the emphasis on legacy systems and organizational issues in the responses about barriers to digital transformation. 90% of survey respondents cited competing priorities and a lack of focus as barriers, while 80% pointed to legacy systems and integration challenges. This may reflect the option choices given in the question, other ways CFOs view the landscape, but I was surprised to see emerging technologies such as AI absent from the list of barriers. It’s not because they have AI fully under control, there’s a sizable gap between what CFOs think AI should be doing and how it’s actually being used.
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