Community Tech Investments Support Higher Education’s Future

Higher Education’s Community Responsibility and Accountability

At its core, higher education is driven by a sense of responsibility. Colleges and universities are tasked with spreading knowledge and are trusted to turn the young people who attend their schools into intelligent, empathetic, hardworking and moral members of society. Some version of that is central to the mission of colleges and universities nationwide.

One of the easiest ways universities can do that is by keeping their eyes and, more important, their discretionary spending close to home. Universities of all sizes invest huge sums of money to buy all kinds of things, including technology, and sometimes these purchasing decisions can create a dilemma for procurement offices.

There is pressure to make decisions motivated solely by cost, especially in an era of tightening budgets and declining enrollments. Being driven only by the bottom line, however, frequently comes in conflict with important university initiatives. These can include providing students with tools that justify their tuitions and prepare them for their careers, or allowing faculty to conduct breakthrough research to earn competitive grants sometimes requiring a certain level of computing power, storage and security.

DISCOVER: CDW’s strategic partnerships seek to boost local economies.

Then there’s the local community. The benefits of using a small, locally owned tech provider include greatly improved customer service, such as the ability to get an employee on campus to do hands-on troubleshooting, and the relationships built between procurement staff and local entrepreneurs. Local business owners often need reliable, large-scale customers to grow their operations, and if those relationships stay strong, universities and local businesses can, and should, grow together.

That is economic empowerment at its best, and it can do wonders for the broader community as well. By supporting small and community-based businesses, the entire economy of the region grows, and new opportunities pop up for the people who live there, including all of those university students, faculty and staff.

Community Mentorship Doesn’t Stop at the Business Level

In addition to offering mentoring for local startup business owners, higher education institutions can also provide mentorship programs that are an investment in the present and future of their communities.

In these mentorship programs, colleges can partner with children who have less access to technology, including personal devices, reliable network connections and updated software, to open up a world of opportunity in tech. The programs are designed to connect students with examples of people who have excelled in the technology field and to offer students access to tools they may not have at home.

LEARN MORE: The University of Massachusetts prioritizes spending with small businesses.

In the long run, similar to the idea of partnering with a local business, the groups should grow together. A more educated community is more likely to produce students interested in attending college, and those students are more likely to succeed if they have familiarity with their local institutions and were given a leg up by them on their way to college.

The Role of Strategic Suppliers

CDW has long helped bridge these types of gaps, including between local businesses and our university partners, and the experience and buying power of a large company such as CDW can be key in connecting small businesses with large customers. Those efforts have remained solid for years, and our team’s commitment to our customers will never change.

Change is synonymous with the tech world, and it’s something we’re all very familiar with. Changes in the available tools, the amount of regulation and available money to spend are common, and partners that are comfortable with that can help navigate everything happening today into tomorrow.

It’s also important to remember that colleges and universities, to a large degree, have discretion over where to allocate their spending. If a commitment to being a steward for the community is important to a college or university, spending with local suppliers is a no-doubt way to do that. If a university wants to cut its spending at all costs, that’s its prerogative as well.

We are here to listen to our partners, understand their problems, provide solutions and guide them toward their end goals, no matter what those end goals may be.