Drupal for Universities: current state and perspectives

Drupal has historically been a very popular choice for Universities across the globe. But this wasn't all good: many Higher Education sites are poorly designed, have a bad information architecture and feature a dated and boring approach. This is bad for the Drupal reputation inside and outside Higher Education Institutions.

We'll first give a comprehensive survey of how Drupal is used in Universities across Europe, focusing on their main public web presence. We'll highlight several commonly found shortcomings and their typical causes, and we'll explain their impact on Drupal perception by insiders and visitors.

Then we'll move on to see what could be done by simply using Drupal the right way. Functionality that can be unlocked by understanding the current core potential would take these sites to a new level; we'll also give practical examples of European Universities that exploit the full potential of Drupal.

We'll do all of the above from the point of view of a mid-size Italian University that was considering abandoning Drupal and ultimately found out that a better-done Drupal was all it needed to modernize its web presence.