Why 71% of top 100 universities use Drupal

1. Posted in Drupal Community
Is Drupal the Best Platform for Higher Education Websites?
Managing a university’s entire web presence, website content, and website compliance with standards and
accessibility across an entire campus is a monumental job. Drupal is used by 7 out of 10 top universities and
educational institutions around the world. That makes a convincing argument for rating Drupal as the best
platform for higher education websites.
Check Out Which Higher Education Institutions Use Drupal
Don’t just take it from me. This list of Drupal’s university users speaks for itself. And it’s barely scratching the
surface.
• Oxford University
• Harvard University
• MIT
• Stanford University
• Duke University
• Karlstad University
• UCLA
• University of Arizona
• Penn State
• University of British Columbia
• University of Toronto
•
I could go on for days. Check out others here.
What Are the Main Reasons Drupal is Popular in Universities?
How much time have you got?
Drupal is hugely efficient in time and cost. It provides a scalable and flexible platform capable of handling
very large amounts of content and hundreds of individual contributors. It can be configured to meet the needs
of entire institutions and also individual departments simultaneously, making it easier for schools and
departments to customize websites to their specific area while operating under the main “umbrella”.
1. Protecting students’ and faculty’s personal information, communications and academic records is of utmost
importance. Websites created using Drupal are pretty much the toughest to hack. That’s why Drupal is relied
on by so many higher education institutions and also government departments, even the White House.
2. Multi-site functionality. Universities and colleges don’t have single-purpose websites. They have many sites,
departments, schools, colleges, intranets, communications systems, and much more. Drupal can handle
multiple sites and their tasks while letting individual departments have full control. That can add up to big
savings in the IT department.
3. Easy content creation and design templates. Drupal 8‘s friendly UI enables any administrators, even non-
experts in web development, to design pages, upload content and manage it. Many design templates are
available that are pretty much effortless to use and ensure consistency across an entire institution.
4. User access control. Websites for higher education institutions require different access rights for a range of
users (professors, students, site visitors, etc). Drupal provides modules for managing access and sharing
content quickly across multiple sites and portals.
5. Reusable content. After creating content, Drupal makes reusing it and circulating it through departments,
intranets and sub-sites a breeze. Because Drupal is open source, there are many free, simple modules
available for enabling this.

2. 6. Responsive mobile access. Students, and indeed staff, are using smartphones and tablets more than PCs to use
college websites for information, administration and communication. Drupal 8’s “mobile first” approach
ensures websites always look great and function seamlessly on mobile devices.
7. Multilingual capability. Drupal 8 can operate in more than 110 languages, allowing a higher education
institution to cater for global needs. Drupal’s translation module is outstanding.
8. Drupal’s powerful collaboration features support internal academic and research teams. Faculty members
and students can easily access manuals, handbooks, procedural documents and other content for their
research.
9. Much more, including that Drupal makes social media campaigns much easier and there are also great
workflow modules available.
Drupal has the functionality, flexibility, scalability, security and responsive web design capability to claim its
rightful place as the foremost platform for developing higher education websites.