Guest article written by: Bob McDonald
Year after year, educational institutions direct significant funds toward digital tools, modernizing classrooms and updating curricula for a digitally driven 21st century. While new endowments for digital arts and grants for emerging technologies often make headlines, comparatively few investments focus on strengthening campus-wide technology infrastructure. The result is a familiar mismatch: high-quality, costly digital resources exist, but the systems that provide access to them remain outdated, fragmented, or difficult to use. This gap undermines both adoption and the intended educational benefits of those resources.
How much are schools investing in digital resources? The numbers add up quickly. For example, a medium-sized university might spend roughly $265,000 for a three-year Adobe Creative Cloud contract. Many institutions also allocate tens of millions—often cited at $50M or more—to build new media centers, innovation labs, and makerspaces. Beyond hardware and software, schools invest heavily in training faculty, expanding IT support, and redesigning curricula for digital learning. These investments are reshaping learning environments, but their value depends on how widely and easily they can be accessed.
In too many cases, the reality falls short of the promise. Students and faculty encounter a paradox: the most current digital tools—high-resolution video libraries, advanced imaging equipment, and multimedia software—are often available only through cumbersome, centralized channels. Access may require formal requisitions, multiple emails, or long walks to isolated media labs. Those barriers discourage use and push instructors and learners toward quick, ad hoc alternatives found online, which can include low-cost or unvetted sources that raise quality and copyright concerns.
This dynamic creates two major losses. First, institutions fail to reap the full return on their digital investments when tools sit underused because they are inconvenient to access. Second, schools lose oversight over the resources their communities rely on. Without centralized, searchable platforms and consistent distribution practices, administrators and librarians cannot ensure quality, accessibility, or legal compliance. The absence of vetting contributes to a permissive culture around copyright and content licensing, increasing institutional risk.
Ultimately, the educational community must confront a simple question: are digital literacy and inclusive access true priorities? Many institutions publicly endorse these goals when announcing high-profile donations or launching niche programs, but the allocation of funds often reveals different priorities. Flashy, specialized media labs can generate publicity and serve a few high-profile programs, yet they leave many departments and students without equitable access to the same digital tools.
A more sustainable approach requires shifting investment from isolated, high-cost facilities toward campus-wide technology infrastructure and connectivity. Robust, centralized systems that make digital assets easily searchable and universally accessible will remain valuable even as individual tools evolve. Unlike a single lab or a specific piece of hardware, a strong infrastructure supports many disciplines, scales with demand, and adapts to future innovations.
Beyond technical benefits, broad access is a matter of campus equity and policy. Discussions about gatekeeping and equal access to resources are increasingly central to higher education. If institutions fail to provide inclusive digital access, they effectively create tiers of opportunity—favoring programs that receive targeted endowments while leaving others reliant on outdated systems or unapproved third-party sources. A campus-wide infrastructure levels that playing field, allowing students and faculty across departments to benefit from the same vetted resources and support.
Bob McDonald is an award-winning teacher and longtime advocate for sustainable educational technologies. For two decades he has supported innovation and creativity across K–12 and higher education. After beginning his career in Baltimore City Public Schools, Bob earned recognition for exploring how emerging technologies affect teaching and learning. He later founded several for-profit and non-profit ventures that delivered sustainable tech platforms for education. He currently serves as Director of Education and Enterprise Services at VideoBlocks for Education in Reston, VA.