We’ve entered a new age of learning: schools and universities are going digital. This makes it easy to forget that traditional infrastructure, such as printers, keeps educational institutions ticking in the background. It’s true that students and staff have quickly adopted cloud-based tools for both administrative and learning purposes. But paper is still used on campuses every day, from lesson plans and classroom handouts to records and reports.
Printing is often overlooked in the tech stack. Teaching and admin staff produce high volumes of paper. Behind the scenes, IT teams juggle unmanaged devices, aging servers, and a growing cyberattack surface. They must also maintain security, control costs, and meet sustainability targets—a tough ask. Schools and universities need a simple way to optimise their print environment. That’s where cloud printing fits in.
Narrowing the digital divide: the role of cloud printing
While we’re witnessing a global digital transformation, from my perspective, it’s happening unevenly. Metropolitan universities and private schools are quickly moving to cloud infrastructure, putting them leaps and bounds ahead of rural areas, which do not have the same access to technology, internet connectivity, and technological literacy skills. In these settings in particular, I think print can play an essential role in supporting inclusive and accessible learning.
Beyond that, the sheer nature of a school or university poses a distinct challenge for IT teams. With large numbers of students and staff spread across multiple locations, it’s incredibly difficult to gain visibility over every user and device that makes up the print ecosystem. And harder still? Making sure the right printing resources are where they’re most needed. We know that paper is unlikely to vanish from campuses any time soon, so any bottlenecks or inefficiencies in print workflows will impact the cloud strategy.
The key to solving these problems in schools and universities is a cloud-based print management solution. Cloud adoption, now a hot topic in edtech circles, can present different levels of success for institutions. This is especially true when transitions happen all at once, which can be intimidating. If this concerns you, consider that incremental cloud printing implementation delivers flexibility without redesigning your entire tech stack at once.
The hidden costs of inefficient print management
When printing isn’t well managed, it doesn’t take much to spiral out of control: overusing colour ink, printing on single pages, leaving print jobs on the tray, and sending documents to the printer twice. All this quickly adds up across thousands of users, leading to a huge amount of paper and toner waste and excessive energy consumption. And the costs of these failures – both financial and environmental – can quickly skyrocket.
Schools and universities are being pushed and pulled towards modernization by two significant factors: rising energy prices and a growing focus on sustainability. But I believe their ability to monitor and control print activity is a major hurdle they have to clear first.
Cloud-based print management platforms deliver a feasible solution, giving IT admins end-to-end visibility across the entire print environment. With a centralized console and dashboard, it becomes much easier to track usage patterns, set print quotas, enforce default duplex printing, and restrict the use of colour ink.
But they also deliver comprehensive breakdowns of print usage and costs. This helps IT, finance, and operations teams set targets for cutting waste and managing spend, then track performance against those goals. In other words, centralized print management is where cost control and green campus policies meet – helping shrink print budgets and your carbon footprint.
Supporting BYOD and hybrid learning models
BYOD is popular because of its flexibility, but it increases the IT admin burden. Guaranteeing every device can access the required printers is challenging.
Enter cloud printing! Imagine the experience of a student or staff member being able to print from any device – even their own – from a classroom, at home, or a cafe, and release the job securely at a convenient printer on campus. It’s exciting, and I think for many institutions it will open the door to even more flexible ways of working and teaching.
Yes, BYOD culture clearly comes with additional security considerations. When data flows directly from staff and student devices to campus printers, there is always a chance it could be intercepted. And when educational institutions are still maturing their security approach, they may fail to consider the security implications of uncollected printing and open networks.
That’s why modern cloud print solutions offer a low-effort, high-impact way to boost data security and improve compliance. Think state-of-the-art security features, such as secure print release and user authentication, that help prevent printed documents from falling into the wrong hands. Centralised print management platforms also provide detailed audit trails and usage logs for immediate tracking of print activity.
A Lifeline for IT teams
In schools and universities, a small IT team must wear many hats: from maintaining networks to managing cybersecurity to enabling remote access. The last thing they need is to have their workload increased by in-person server maintenance, troubleshooting, and manual updates demanded by legacy print setups.
To complicate IT administration further, educational institutions are constantly in flux; student populations fluctuate each semester, and new buildings and campuses are added. Each change requires manually installing print drivers, setting up queues, onboarding printers, and configuring devices.
For overstretched IT departments, centralised print management is a lifeline. Not only does it automate many time-consuming tasks, but it also enables remote support and monitoring, so tech staff don’t have to run from campus to campus to fix printing issues. A cloud print environment automatically scales with demand, making growth painless for your IT team. And because they aren’t busy putting out fires, they can channel their time and energy into driving wider tech modernization strategies.
Print within education is far from dead, but when it is forgotten, it’s under-optimised. Cloud-based solutions are designed to bring print out of the shadows, helping schools meet their efficiency, cost, and sustainability targets – especially in the midst of the challenges of a hybrid learning environment. Being a truly digital-first school or university also means being cloud-first when it comes to printing.
