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New report finds half of US university CTOs can't prove AI ROI but 61% bought expensive campus-wide licences anyway

ended 13. May 2026

A new Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2026 survey of 130 US campus CTOs found that only 29% believe their AI investments have met or exceeded ROI expectations. Despite that, institution-wide AI licence purchases more than doubled in a year, from 27% to 61% of campuses. That's a lot of purchasing for technology whose value most CTOs can't demonstrate.

When asked where AI has actually delivered benefits the data revealed:

  • 55% said employee productivity
  • 23% said teaching and learning
  • 9% said research

This shows the tool investments are speeding up backoffice admin more than improving education. In terms of concerns:

  • 41% admit their biggest concern isn't poor outcomes,  it's falling behind the university down the road
  • 55% say staff capacity is the number one brake on AI impact
  • 48% cite costs
  • 38% cite governance and policy uncertainty
  • 49% say the current pace of change is unsustainable without new resources, rising to 60% at private nonprofits

On cybersecurity:

  • 59% say a critical breach or ransomware event is a top worry looking ahead to 2030. Their concern is legitimate. 
  • Last week, the Canvas learning management system was hacked. 275 million users attending 8,800 institutions were threatened, and the provider, Instructure, paid the ransom (an undisclosed amount) on 11 May 2026. 
  • Columbia, Princeton and New York University have all been breached in the past year. 
  • 62% of CTOs worry they won't be able to recruit or retain qualified IT staff to protect them against these threats

We'd like your views:

  • If 55% of CTOs say AI's biggest win is employee productivity rather than student outcomes, should institutions stop framing these as educational investments?
  • When 41% of tech leaders say their top worry is falling behind peers rather than failing students, is competitive anxiety a legitimate basis for multimillion-dollar technology purchases? Shouldn't their focus be on AI literacy for their students?
  • With access to trained staff rated as the number one barrier to more AI adoption and 59% fearing a major cyber breach, are universities buying tools they can neither staff nor secure?
  • If only 23% of CTOs believe AI has improved teaching and learning after three years of investment, at what point does continued purchasing without evidence become a waste of funding?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Colette MasonVerified
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Student learning is another casualty in yet another AI arms race. Universities are buying AI to keep pace with each other, not to prepare students for a world where knowing how to work with these tools will determine who gets hired and who gets automated.

The irony is brutal: institutions exist to educate, and they're spending on tools that speed up their own office admin while a significant number of students graduate no more AI-literate than when they enrolled.

If the goal is workforce readiness, the money belongs in the curriculum, not campus-wide licence deals driven by boardroom anxiety.
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Katrina YoungVerified
Futurist | Chief Technology Officer CTO/CDO Ethical AI & Digital Transformation Strategist at KYC Digital
Universities are buying AI faster than they can govern, secure or properly implement it. If only 23% of CTOs believe AI has improved teaching and learning after years of investment, institutions need to be honest about where the value is actually landing. Right now, the biggest measurable gains appear to be administrative productivity, not student outcomes. The more revealing figure is the 41% of leaders worried about falling behind peer institutions. That suggests competitive pressure is influencing procurement decisions as much as evidence. At the same time, universities are scaling AI adoption while warning about cyber breaches and shortages of qualified IT staff. The risk is not just wasted spend. It is expanding institutional dependency on systems many organisations do not yet have the workforce or governance maturity to manage safely.
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Editor
Mitali DeypurkaysthaVerified
AI Governance Strategist & CMO at AISensa
87% of employers say AI will reshape graduate jobs within three years, according to the Institute of Student Employers. Yet many universities appear more focused on winning an AI spending race than preparing students for that reality. Institutions built on evidence, scrutiny and accountability are in danger of becoming hypocritical by pouring money into technology they still struggle to prove is improving education. The real scandal is not universities experimenting with AI, but students taking on decades of debt while campuses prioritise prestige purchases and back-office productivity over genuine AI literacy. If universities want to justify aggressive AI spending, they need to show that it makes graduates more employable rather than simply making administration more efficient. Otherwise, this starts to look less like innovation and more like a very expensive panic-buy.