Choosing the right content management system (CMS) for a university or college can be very challenging. There are so many things to consider: implementation costs, the cost of maintenance, usability for various site administrators, content editors, developers and much more.
It’s no surprise that some of the largest, most prestigious universities and colleges leverage Drupal for its incredible flexibility, scalability and security. Did you know that more than 26% of all .edu domain sites are built with Drupal? Of that, 71% of the top universities including Oxford, MIT, Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Penn State, University of British Columbia and many more choose Drupal!
So why do so many leading educational facilities choose a platform like Drupal?
Reduce operational costs with robust multisite capabilities like no other
Universities and colleges rely on multiple domains to serve their numerous departmental and branch needs. Drupal’s simplistic approach to multisite environments makes it possible to have an almost infinite number of sites on the same Drupal installation.
Having this sort of flexibility allows your institution to manage the delivery and governance of control over many sites from a single management console. By utilizing Drupal multisite capabilities, your departments will:
- Improve governance across your organization and web experiences
- Centrally manage your multiple Drupal sites from a single interface
- Mitigate outages through an elastic and scalable platform
- Cut costs per site delivered and developed
- And much more!
Universities are always looking to launch new sites and make content or configurations on the fly. Drupal multisite makes this process possible all while saving time, money and resources. Freshly-branded sites can go live in a matter of days rather than months by leveraging shared content such as libraries, components, and sign-on kits.
Drupal can have a dramatic impact on reducing overhead costs and increasing operational efficiency. The cost of supporting a multitude of sites along with allocating resources to training and support is expensive. As an open-source technology (no licensing fees), along with the multisite feature, creating sites for different groups becomes exponentially easier, more cost-effective, and ensures brand consistency.
Engage with prospective/enrolled students, staff and alumni more effectively
Empowering the wide range of needs of departments and different organizations across a university campus while maintaining a consistent brand and user experience is no easy feat.
Drupal’s built-in multisite capabilities also provide every department with the right tools and relevant media vehicles to engage with current and prospective students and alumni.
Communicating with different segments of your audience is crucial to the success of recruiting and fundraising initiatives. There are countless opportunities within the Drupal toolkit to make sure your institution can do this effectively.
Here are just a few examples.
Drupal’s accessibility advantage
According to The World Bank Group’s disability inclusion report:
“One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability, and disability prevalence is higher for developing countries. One-fifth of the estimated global total, or between 110 million and 190 million people, experience significant disabilities.”
Drupal is committed to ensuring its platform is accessible by default. As an inclusive community built on open standards, Drupal adheres to the belief that people of all abilities and disabilities should be able to perceive, navigate, and understand web content while being free of any barriers.
Providing accessible experiences for users who rely on assistive technology like screen readers, voice detection software, zoom magnification, switch controls and other assistive devices is critical to reducing these barriers and raising awareness for a changing culture.
When you create a universal design to include accessibility, you are improving your website’s framework, resulting in accessibility being built into all components of your site. This framework takes into account the preferences and needs of users of all abilities.
Rather than spending more time and money creating bandage solutions for certain barriers, investing in a digital platform like Drupal has innovation and inclusion built into its foundation. Not only will your organization be serving everyone equally, but your potential audience could grow by more than 20%.
Ready for all devices, at all times
Today’s student body is made up of a mobile-first generation. The methods in which universities not only recruit but engage with students on campus will need to evolve rapidly.
According to the 2017 College Explorer Market Research Study, college students on average own 5.6 devices and spend 137+ hours of screen-time on them. Though it may seem like common sense now, a staggering number of institutions are not yet prepared for this reality. To properly engage with students, you need to account for a variety of screen sizes.
Drupal offers a fully responsive solution that reconfigures itself for mobile, tablets and desktops, allowing users to efficiently access website content regardless of the device they are on. By utilizing various engagement techniques including improved user experience and SEO techniques, institutions can ensure content is optimized across devices, increasing their audience of prospective students and applicants.
A more personalized, multilingual education experience
With such a broad audience, it can often be tough to truly personalize content with every user in mind. Universities face a more complex digital strategy when it comes to creating a truly personalized website.
International students represent a greater percentage of the overall U.S. student population now than ever before, and their numbers are increasing rapidly. According to the Institute of International Education,
“The total number of international students, 1,095,299, is a 0.05 percent increase over last year, according to the 2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. International students make up 5.5 percent of the total U.S. higher education population. According to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, international students contributed $44.7 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, an increase of 5.5 percent from the previous year.”
In Canada, those numbers are increasing at an even higher rate.
“Newly released numbers from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) reveal that as of December 31, 2019, there were 642,480 international students in Canada. This number represents a 13% increase over 2018.”
With so many unique individuals visiting the same university landing pages, optimization, content strategy, conversion path mapping and relevant call to actions (CTA’s) are difficult considerations to implement. With Drupal, a multilingual translation feature is ready out-of-the-box.
This is crucial for higher education institutions to hit the ground running, delivering localized content and a consistent user experience for everyone, regardless of geographic location, all while saving both time and money in the process.
Drupal is one of the most secure platforms on the planet
Universities are responsible for a vast amount of personal information. Drupal is designed to stand up to security vulnerabilities, with a team on the ready to address and release security fixes.
Strong evidence shows that open source technologies, and Drupal in particular, not only meet global security standards, but are consistently on the cutting edge of security enhancements.
Drupal, its APIs, and its core and contributed modules, power millions of websites on the internet. As such, the Drupal code is continuously scanned, audited, and analyzed for security vulnerabilities and breaches. Through peer review within Drupal’s continuously growing worldwide community of experts, Drupal’s core APIs have been strengthened over its long life to mitigate common vulnerabilities.
According to CVE Details, an online security vulnerability data source, there have been 324 vulnerabilities reported for Drupal since 2002, with only 8 being reported in 2017. Compared to Drupal alternatives like WordPress or SharePoint, Drupal has 70% fewer vulnerabilities reported on average.
These metrics demonstrate that Drupal is a more secure alternative than most of its competition. This is due to the following people, standards, processes, and measures working in tandem to mitigate threats:
- Drupal’s Security Team, Project Maintainers, and Users
- Security-focused Contributed Modules
- Notifications
- Secure Drupal Hosting
Next steps towards an industry-leading digital experience
So, what is stopping you from choosing Drupal as the robust, scalable, personalized and highly secure platform for your next digital transformation project? If you have an upcoming web project and would like more information on how Portage CyberTech leverages Drupal to build award-winning solutions for enterprises, governments and higher education, check out our customer success stories and contact us today to get started!