Finance remains the top issue for information technology in higher education, according to an annual survey of institutions by Educause. But security issues are becoming more and more important.

Since 2000, Educause has conducted a poll of institutions -- typically answered by chief information officers -- about their priorities and about the issues they think have the potential to become more important. Finance has consistently been a top ranked issue, and was the No. 1 answer this year and last to the question of the issue that must be resolved to assure the institution's strategic success.

Last year, finance also topped the list of issues "with the potential to become more significant." But this year, it dropped to second place, replaced by security issues. Security issues have received increasing public attention as a series of breaches have embarrassed institutions.

The CIO's ranked the following as the top 10 issues for their institution's success:

• Funding IT
• Security and information management
• Administrative information systems
• Strategic planning
• Infrastructure management
• Faculty development, support and training
• E-learning, distributed teaching and learning
• Governance and leadership for IT
• Enterprise-level portals
• Web systems and services

Educause noted that some issues that ranked quite high in the survey's early years -- such as distance education and desktop computing -- no longer are top priorities, either because institutions have systems in place or are no longer pursuing certain programs.