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Our annual survey of CTOs found growing institutional reliance on artificial intelligence, coupled with concerns about value, cybersecurity and more.
By Kathryn Palmer
Some 41 percent of CTOs say that falling behind peer institutions in AI adoption and innovation is among their top worries when looking ahead to 2030.
Mongkol Onnuan/Getty Images
Although many colleges and universities are spending big on artificial intelligence tools, half of chief technology officers say the return on investment is either unclear or fell below their expectations. Just 29 percent say investments in AI have met or exceeded their ROI expectations.
That’s one of the top-level findings from the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2026 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers, published today. And experts say it’s not surprising.
“ROI is going to be a concern when [institutions] are rushing to solutions without first defining the problem they’re trying to solve,” strategist Brian Fleming, a former university administrator, told Inside Higher Ed. “It creates a lot of fatigue and a much higher risk profile for institutions as they move into this brave new world of technology.”
On Wednesday, June 10, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a free webcast featuring expert panelists to discuss the survey findings and what it takes to lead on technology in today’s rapidly shifting postsecondary landscape. Register for that conversation here, even if you can’t attend live.
Inside Higher Ed’s 2026 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey included 130 technology leaders, mostly from public and private nonprofit institutions, for a margin of error of eight percentage points. Download the full results here.
This independent editorial project was made possible by support from T-Mobile for Education, Jenzabar and Modo.
In the three-plus years since generative AI went mainstream, tech companies have created education-specific AI-powered products and marketed them as revolutionary tools essential to preparing college students for a job market that they predict will soon need far fewer entry-level human workers. Despite mixed early evidence that AI tools enhance teaching and learning—some studies show that overreliance on it can weaken critical thinking skills—universities are increasingly responding to market and other pressures to adopt AI.
According to the survey, 49 percent of CTOs say investing in generative AI is a high or essential priority, up from 34 percent in 2025; for agentic AI, the share is 35 percent, up from 28 percent; for predictive AI, it’s 32 percent, up from 24 percent.
Most institutions represented now provide students with institutional access to generative AI tools in some way. Some 61 percent provide access through an institutionwide license, more than double last year’s rate of 27 percent.
That aligns with other reports tracking the rise in higher education partnerships with AI companies over the past few years.
Last December, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI has sold more than 700,000 ChatGPT licenses to about 35 public universities. Several—including the California State University system, the University of Colorado system and Arizona State University—have inked multimillion-dollar deals with the company to provide their staff, faculty and students with access to ChatGPT Edu. Similar to Anthropic’s Claude for Education and Google’s Gemini for Education, ChatGPT Edu allows students, faculty and staff to use the technology in a closed, secure system.
While some faculty have questioned the benefits of paying for these tools, the CTO survey suggests that perceived competition may be partly driving that uptick: 41 percent of CTOs ranked falling behind peer institutions in AI adoption and innovation among their top worries when looking ahead to 2030.
Colleges need to slow down long enough to define the problem they’re trying to solve.”
Fleming, whose book The Solution Trap: A Guide to Better Decision-Making for Higher Education Leaders came out last month, said the survey data reflects the higher education sector’s long-standing tendency to “innovate through imitation,” of which the AI race is the latest iteration.
“One institution’s AI strategy may not be right for the one down the street because that institution may be trying to solve a different problem. Or the [original] institution may not be solving a problem at all,” he said. “Colleges need to slow down long enough to define the problem they’re trying to solve.”
Much of the tech sector’s messaging around AI adoption has focused on how it can help students get a leg up in the workforce after graduation. But as far as CTOs are concerned, AI has delivered the most value thus far to their institutions in terms of individual employee productivity.
When asked to identify the three areas where AI has delivered the most tangible value to their institution, 55 percent of CTOs cited employee productivity gains—by far the most popular option from a long list—followed by improved IT operations and services management (30 percent) and increased administrative efficiency (29 percent). Meanwhile, only 23 percent of CTOs ranked improved teaching and learning among AI’s three biggest value-adds to their institution. Just 13 percent said it helped with advising and support services, and 9 percent said the same about its impact on research.
“This suggests that educators and students and faculty aren’t finding AI to be all that useful,” said Britt Paris, an associate professor of library and information science at Rutgers University and chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions.
Meanwhile, the more widespread use of AI as a time saver for administrative tasks highlights “higher education’s lack of resources, where we’re often asked to do too much with too little,” Paris said.
CTOs are also concerned about resources, especially with the rapid advancement of complex, AI-powered technology.
According to the survey, 49 percent of all CTOs consider the current pace of technology-driven change as unsustainable without new resources; this increases to 60 percent among private nonprofit college CTOs. Additionally, 55 percent of all CTOs ranked skills and staff capacity as one of the top three factors limiting AI’s impact on their campus. Some 48 percent cited costs, while 38 percent cited governance and policy uncertainty.
“If AI adoption and leadership are a priority, then resources need to follow,” Fleming said. “If the organization is not healthy—if decisions aren’t being made in the right way and they don’t have the right structure, talent and incentives in place—then the problems will continue to persist.”
The survey also showed that CTOs are especially stressed about resources as they plan for the future. Looking ahead to 2030, 62 percent say a top worry is that their institution won’t be able to recruit or retain qualified IT talent. In a related, close second, 59 percent say they are most worried about a critical cybersecurity breach or ransomware event.
“AI is pushing up IT salaries. Cybersecurity people are more in demand because AI can both be used to attack and protect systems,” said Jeff Funk, an independent technology consultant and author of the 2024 book Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles: A Guide to Spotting, Avoiding, and Exploiting Investment Bubbles in Tech. “Higher ed doesn’t have the people to handle that.”
But colleges, which store troves of personal information, are already prime targets for cybercriminals.
Over the past year, hackers have infiltrated numerous high-profile institutions, including Columbia, Princeton and New York Universities. Last week, a cybercriminal gang twice breached the widely used learning management system Canvas, threatening to leak the data of 275 million users at more than 8,000 institutions if Instructure, Canvas’s parent company, didn’t pay a ransom. With students and faculty temporarily unable to access course materials, many institutions postponed final exams. On Monday, Instructure announced it had paid the ransom to restore users’ access to Canvas and protect their data.
While the Canvas hack exposed the vulnerability of using a third-party LMS to deliver courses, it also demonstrated how critical it is for individual universities to protect their data against bad actors. But as the CTO survey suggests, the strength of those and other campus technology efforts will depend on investing in the right resources, said Mark McCormack, senior director of research and insights for Educause.
“As higher education institutions face tighter budgets, staffing shortages and increasing operational pressures, institutions can no longer afford impulsive or ‘quick-fix’ technology purchases that create additional strain on IT teams and reduce interoperability,” he said. “Instead, the [CTO survey] stresses the importance of evaluating technologies through clear cost, ROI and return-on-value assessments before making large-scale investments.”
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