As the CIO of a university, I can tell you that there are two trends in this area going on at colleges these days... depending on the type of college that you are.
Every college currently faces bandwidth challenges. Mainly, these come from P2P technologies like Bittorrent, Ares and others. But, more and more problems are coming from sites that offer Flash video and the like. There are a lot of tools that automatically detect these uses and can "prioritize" the traffic on the network. In general, it is best not to attempt to block these tools entirely as this causes some clients to port search... and that can do more harm than good. Plus, these tools in and of themselves, are not bad.
The other trend for more conservative colleges is to content manage. Generally, it is religious institutions who place in these restrictions. Further, these tools do not, in and of themselves, manage bandwidth use at all. That is not their main intended purpose, after all. Their purpose is to limit access to what the college deems as "inappropriate" content.
I can say that in public institutions and private universities, like mine, that are not strongly tied to particular religious beliefs, there is no trend to install content management systems. That would generally be viewed by those institutions as an affront to academic freedom.
For general reports on trends in colleges and universities, I would check out Educause at www.educause.edu. They produce excellent reports on current trends in IT at universities.
I hope this helps!
William M.
Oglethorpe University
Slashdot Mirror
As the CIO of a university, I can tell you that there are two trends in this area going on at colleges these days... depending on the type of college that you are. Every college currently faces bandwidth challenges. Mainly, these come from P2P technologies like Bittorrent, Ares and others. But, more and more problems are coming from sites that offer Flash video and the like. There are a lot of tools that automatically detect these uses and can "prioritize" the traffic on the network. In general, it is best not to attempt to block these tools entirely as this causes some clients to port search... and that can do more harm than good. Plus, these tools in and of themselves, are not bad. The other trend for more conservative colleges is to content manage. Generally, it is religious institutions who place in these restrictions. Further, these tools do not, in and of themselves, manage bandwidth use at all. That is not their main intended purpose, after all. Their purpose is to limit access to what the college deems as "inappropriate" content. I can say that in public institutions and private universities, like mine, that are not strongly tied to particular religious beliefs, there is no trend to install content management systems. That would generally be viewed by those institutions as an affront to academic freedom. For general reports on trends in colleges and universities, I would check out Educause at www.educause.edu. They produce excellent reports on current trends in IT at universities. I hope this helps! William M. Oglethorpe University