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The Ivy Digital Challenge: Why the Most Prestigious Universities Have the Most Ungovernable Digital Ecosystems
Not long ago, an R1 research university was on the verge of receiving a $50 million gift. Transformational money. The kind that gets announced at a board meeting and celebrated with a press release. The donor had one condition: naming rights for the college of business. The development office was thrilled. The IT team was not. What followed was not a legal negotiation or a donor relations problem. It was an infrastructure crisis. The university operated dozens of independent
Jeff Dillon
6 min read


The Canvas Hack Students Actually Wanted (Until They Didn't)
If you'd polled college students on Tuesday last week what they wanted most, Canvas outage would've cracked the top three. Finals week timing? Undefeated. No quizzes submitted. No grades posted. No professor emails about incomplete assignments. Then ShinyHunters made it happen. Thousands of students were redirected to an extortion demand instead of their course materials last week, the Canvas breach became a problem about more than data. It became a problem about trust—and In
Jeff Dillon
3 min read


The Silent Crisis: College Closures and the EdTech Failure Behind Them
Sterling College sits on 130 acres in rural Vermont, its isolation both its greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability. There are no cell towers and barely any passing traffic. For students, that remoteness can feel intentional, a refuge from the scale and pressure of traditional universities. But in today's digital-first college enrollment ecosystem, isolation doesn't just mean distance. It means invisibility. Sterling recently announced it would close at the end of th
Jeff Dillon
4 min read


The Modern University Technology Stack: How RISD Is Building for What's Next
One art-and-design institution's deliberate approach to interoperability, AI-powered search, and mobile-first experience offers a replicable model for digital leaders across higher education. A modern university technology stack should feel less like a collection of products and more like a well-composed experience. Higher education rarely gets to start from a blank page, though. Most institutions carry years of inherited systems, fragmented ownership, and siloed content. The
Jeff Dillon
7 min read
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