Separated Siblings, Reunited

An open letter to the boards of EDUCAUSE and Internet2 from a member of the generation that helped higher education put the Internet to work.

I have known every leader of EDUCAUSE and Internet2 since their founding. Doug Van Houweling helped me explain why a national research network mattered to a small university like Pepperdine. I knew Dave Lambert from our earlier work starting universities in Qatar. Brian Hawkins once coached me through delivering a difficult project assessment to my president, a close friend of his. Diana Oblinger invested in me as I entered my first CIO role and continued to do so as my responsibilities grew. And I have admired John O’Brien’s effort to humanize the work technology professionals do inside universities. These relationships span most of my career. I care about the community these leaders helped build and what comes next for it.

In this week’s Dispatch, I write directly to the boards of EDUCAUSE and Internet2. The organizations now hold separate authority over work that has become interdependent, limiting the scale at which higher education can act. John O’Brien’s retirement gives the boards a brief opportunity to reconsider that structure before EDUCAUSE begins a search for its next president. I believe both boards should use this moment to bring this critical work together under a single organization.

The big picture

Colleges and Universities must do some things together that no institution can do well alone. It must design, develop, and operate technology that connects institutions and integrates their systems, help those institutions plan for, adopt, and use that technology effectively, and develop the talent capable of doing both. These functions depend on one another. Technology has little value without sound use, and that use depends on professionals who understand what they are responsible for sustaining.

Higher education has placed that work under two organizations. EDUCAUSE and Internet2 answer to separate boards and separate lines of authority. Each does serious work alone, but they operate with different missions. Neither is accountable for the whole. The result is a problem of scale. Size becomes leverage only when technical capacity, institutional practice, and professional formation move together, and under divided governance they do not. The community receives less than its real weight.

John O’Brien announced in August that he will retire as president of EDUCAUSE, after a tenure that carried the organization through a pandemic, the arrival of GenAI, and a harder policy climate. He leaves EDUCAUSE more attentive to the breadth of institutions it serves. His retirement gives the EDUCAUSE and Internet2 boards a brief opportunity to consider structural reunion before EDUCAUSE begins a search for a president whose responsibility will be to lead the organization as it exists. Institutions reexamine technologies constantly, but the organizations through which they govern themselves accumulate history until old arrangements feel like facts rather than choices. A transition makes the choice visible again. Different missions do not by themselves justify separate governance once the work has become one.

The Distinction We Inherited

The division made sense when the work itself was divided. CAUSE began in 1962 among campus data-processing leaders responsible for administrative systems and institutional data. Educom served a different community, one concerned with academic computing, communications, teaching, and research. These groups worked with different missions and values and answered to different institutional needs.

By the 1990s, the distinction was becoming harder to maintain. Administrative systems depended on campus networks to operate, while academic computing had become part of the institution’s broader technology environment. CAUSE and Educom merged in 1998 to form EDUCAUSE, seeking more coherent service across campus technology, stronger support for the profession, and a unified voice on policy.

Internet2 emerged during the same period around a more concentrated need. In 1996, thirty-four university leaders gathered near Chicago to pursue advanced networking for research and education. The resulting organization incorporated as the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development and became known as Internet2. EDUCAUSE developed as a broad professional association. Internet2 retained an operating mission centered on network infrastructure and related technology.

The distinction between those missions remained, but the work on campuses converged over time. Networks became the foundation for administrative, academic, and research systems alike. Internet-based threats made identity and access an ongoing concern. Federated identity allowed for collaboration across institutional boundaries, connecting students, faculty, and staff together. Research data security and GenAI have since raised the consequences of getting those relationships wrong.

EDUCAUSE evolved too. Its mission broadened toward governance, teaching and learning, leadership, advocacy, and development of the profession. Internet2 remained closer to the operation of technology. Both choices were reasonable. But technology, institutional use, and professional judgment have become harder to separate even as responsibility for them has settled into two organizations. The distinction that produced the two organizations has largely faded, but the organizations remain apart.

Where the Boundary Now Runs

This organizational boundary is easiest to see in the infrastructure higher education uses to establish trust across institutions. A scholar can use an institutional login to reach a dataset or service hosted somewhere else. A visitor can connect to another campus through eduroam without receiving a local user account. Internet2 operates InCommon, the identity federation that supports much of this access. Trust in these settings is not simply a professional value. It is built into the technology.

But the technology itself only establishes identity and access. Professionals still decide what users are allowed to reach, what information must be protected, and what obligations follow from granting access. Those decisions involve policy, institutional risk, and professional judgment. EDUCAUSE convenes much of that work through its communities and programs in privacy, cybersecurity, data governance, and GenAI.

The division is therefore no longer between separate kinds of work. Internet2 operates the technology used to establish trust, while EDUCAUSE helps institutions determine how that technology should be governed and used. Each organization performs an important part of the work, but neither is accountable for connecting the operation of the technology with its institutional impact. That separation keeps lessons from the operation of the technology from directly shaping how institutions plan for and use it. Higher education approaches vendors, government, and standards bodies through organizations representing different parts of the same problem. The community has considerable scale, but no organization is accountable for bringing its technical capacity, institutional practice, and professional knowledge together.

An Honest Counterargument

The strongest objection to a merger comes from smaller colleges and universities. John O’Brien made EDUCAUSE more attentive to institutions that lack the staff and resources of a major research university. For many of them, EDUCAUSE is their only connection to the profession. Internet2 has a different center of gravity. Its services and governance reflect the requirements of research-intensive institutions operating at scale. A merger could give those larger institutions greater influence over the combined organization while leaving smaller members present but less consequential.

That possibility should not be dismissed. Bigger institutions do not merely bring more resources to a common organization. They also bring greater capacity to shape its agenda. Any merger would therefore need a governing structure and bylaws that give smaller institutions real authority rather than nominal board representation.

A second concern is whether a combined organization could preserve the discipline required to operate technical infrastructure. Internet2 already does this through a community-governed model that combines working groups and broad institutional participation with clear responsibility for network, identity, and security services. The task is to bring the operation and institutional use of technology under common governance while retaining the operating authority required for essential services.

These concerns should shape a merger, but they do not make continued separation of the organizations the better choice. Smaller institutions stand to benefit most when technical capabilities, guidance for using them, and professional development are available through one community association. Most cannot build that capacity for themselves. And common governance does not require common operating methods. A combined organization could protect Internet2’s operating authority while giving smaller institutions a meaningful role in governing the broader organization.

The present arrangement also carries risk. It divides responsibility for technology from responsibility for its institutional use and advocacy, leaving neither organization accountable for the whole community. The boards should not preserve that division simply because a merger would require careful design. They should use the transition to determine how the two organizations can come together while protecting the constituencies and operating responsibilities that made each one unique and valuable.

The final word

The present structure persists because each organization’s leaders are charged with preserving it. An EDUCAUSE president advances EDUCAUSE. An Internet2 chief executive advances Internet2, and each board governs the organization entrusted to it. As Timur Kuran has observed, arrangements endure when those positioned to question them have little incentive to do so. John O’Brien’s retirement briefly changes that calculation. Once EDUCAUSE appoints a new president, the opportunity for structural reconsideration will have passed. The EDUCAUSE and Internet2 boards should begin a formal merger discussion before the presidential search moves forward.

The reason is the work itself. Internet2 operates technology that connects institutions. EDUCAUSE helps institutions adopt and use technology while developing professionals responsible for it. Those responsibilities now depend on one another, but no organization is accountable for the whole. A merger should preserve the operating authority of network and identity services and give smaller institutions meaningful authority in the combined organization. Those are design requirements, not reasons to remain apart. The two boards should determine how the organizations can come together before committing them to another leadership cycle of separation.

Many thanks to several who helped with fact-checking this commentary. The ideas here are the opinions of the author alone, and do not represent those of his past or present employers.