Do University Leaders Grasp the Depth of IT’s Staffing Crisis?

The shortage of IT workers, especially those focused on cybersecurity, is nothing new. For years, hundreds of thousands of IT jobs in this country have remained open. The latest research from Cyber Seek shows 469,930 open cybersecurity jobs in the United States; if filled, those positions would increase the overall workforce by more than 27%.

So, if IT departments have been short-staffed for years and officials believe that lack of staff is hampering an institution’s ability to defend itself, why are those staffing needs not better understood?

IT Workers are Stressed, and Not Just About Security Threats

There is, of course, no easy answer to that question, but part of the reason staffing challenges aren’t understood is because many of the difficulties IT employees face aren’t readily apparent and might not be shared by the employees themselves.

“This is a stressful industry, there’s just no two ways about that,” says Buck Bell, CDW’s Global Security Strategy Office lead, in the CDW report.

The CDW survey drilled down on that stress and found that one of the most stressful activities for IT staff was reporting on their work to institutional leadership. More than 40% called that very or somewhat stressful, around the same percentage who felt a lack of tools was a stressor (41%).

A lack of staff, unsurprisingly, also rated as highly stressful. Sixty-two percent rated low staffing in the very or somewhat stressful range, the most stress-inducing of eight different areas that were probed and even more stressful than responding to actual security threats (56%).

Employees’ overall stress levels were also troubling, with only 17% saying they found their jobs either somewhat or very stress-free, compared with 57% who said their jobs were the opposite (very or somewhat stressful).

LEARN MORE: Software support can ease the heavy burden on higher ed IT departments.

Workers Want Better Salaries, More Training and More Co-Workers

The data on worker stress is troubling but, again, not surprising.

IT employees in higher education are being asked to do more with less and have been for years. The staffing shortage has arrived at the same time as universities are facing budget crunches tied to the loss of federal funding for COVID-19 relief and declining enrollments. (Thirty-four percent of respondents to the CDW survey said “budgetary resources” were missing from their cybersecurity approach, and just 10% said their departments were “fully staffed”).

Combine that with inflation driving up the costs of operating a college or university and the reality that IT workers can almost certainly earn a higher salary in other, for-profit industries. And layoffs, or just the threat of layoffs amid an air of uncertainty about higher education’s overall future, are also a contributing factor to employee dissatisfaction.