Keele University conducted an independent study to evaluate the value of its Jisc membership. It found that through its Jisc subscription and optional services, Keele saves over £2.8 million per year, including £2.558 million in direct cost savings and £279,000 in costs avoided. Key areas where Keele saves money through Jisc include licensing for learning and research resources, cyber security and connectivity support, federated access for single sign-on, and access to data and analytics tools. Without Jisc's services, Keele would face significant budget and resource challenges in supporting learning, teaching and research.

1. Jisc’s value to HE:
Keele University

2. Keele University is a forward-looking
research-focused teaching university.
It serves a wide range of student
personas and is highly rated for
student experience and satisfaction.
It is also highly rated for research.
It took part in an independent study to investigate the
value it gets from its Jisc membership.
This is what it discovered.
Keele University
Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University
2

3. Keele’s Jisc subscription
for 2020/21 is £43,490.
Through that subscription plus
optional services, Keele saves
£2.8m a year
Specifically, Keele saves
£2,558,000 in cost savings
and £279,000 in costs avoided
Here’s how
3 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

4. Learning and research resources – headline savings
Jisc’s learning and research resources save Keele more than £2m.
How?
Annual cost saving
Licensing
(including Chest)
£2,305,948
Licensing, APC
costs avoided
£125,601
Licensing, effort
avoided
£54,000
Totals £2,485,549
4 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

5. Without Jisc there would
be a vastly reduced level
of e-content which would
not meet student
expectations.
5 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

6. Learning and research
resources - benefits
 Without Jisc, Keele would not be able to find the
budget to reinvest in these resources. Teachers and
researchers would have to be more resourceful and
the student experience would be negatively
impacted.
 Keele relies on the national agreements that Jisc
negotiates to source, negotiate, manage access
and resolve problems.
 Jisc’s help to avoid the impact of VAT on new
publisher deals is critical.
6 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

7. Cyber security and connectivity – headline savings
“Jisc’s Janet team sorts out issues so that we don’t even see them.”
Keele saves more than £250,000 a year by using Jisc’s connectivity
and cyber security support. That’s:
£185,248
In cost saving
£92,625
in cost avoidance – without Jisc,
Keele would need one and a half
extra cyber- and connectivity-
skilled full-time staff.
7 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

8. Connectivity - savings
Keele enjoys other connectivity-related savings:
eduroam
£33,000 (1 FTE)
the sector-wide federated service is heavily used and
enhances student and staff experience on and off
campus as well as for visiting partner organisations.
eduroam saves helpdesk effort in managing wifi
credentials for students, staff and visitors.
8 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

9. Cyber security – context
A cyber security-based outage would seriously impact teaching as far
more resources are now online.
Teaching
A four-hour outage
would cause 1531
hours of teaching
to be lost.
Clearing
A similar outage
during clearing
could lose 50
students and an
associated
£462,500 yearly
income
Impact
A 117-minute
attack on Keele
(based on its
2020/21 attacks)
would cost
£298,620
9 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

10. Trust and identity – headline savings
Single sign on, enabled by Jisc’s federated access, is a vital
tool to make it as easy as possible for students and staff to
access learning resources. It also saves money:
Federated access:
Library
315 hours /
£8,820
Federated access:
technology
150 hours /
£4,200
Totals
465 hours/
£13,020
Federated access is a
huge time saver
10 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

11. Data and analytics
• Unique Jisc datasets from HESA and Heidi Plus
enable and enhance course planning and
recruitment strategies, aligning with Keele’s data-
driven approach. Keele uses them for:
• Recruitment analysis focusing on horizon scanning,
course demand, curriculum and new course
development.
• To enable better decision making – without Heidi
Plus, Keele would have to scrape data from
multiple sources.
11 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

12. Student and staff experience
Keele saved nearly £30,000 in costs avoided by using Jisc’s digital
experience insights survey and digital capabilities framework.
• Keele uses Jisc tools as part of its student induction
and global challenge pathways
• It also uses Jisc digital insights survey for whole
ecosystem reviews
• Jisc’s digital experience insights survey helps Keele
benchmark and inform its overall digital strategy
Jisc insights survey gave us a
starting position to bring other
models in. Without Jisc it would
have taken longer to get where
we are now.
12 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

13. Without Jisc…
“We would lose our knowledge
base for learning and teaching and
library digital capability.”
“Would lead to increased costs,
time and resources that we
don’t have.”
“We would lose our sector guide
and ability to manage the learning
and research resources market, fill
gaps and deliver OA.”
13 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University

14. Keele University worked with independent
consultant Richard Hadfield to look at its
portfolio of Jisc services and analyse the
cost savings, costs avoided and the benefits
to learners, staff and the college as a whole.
Keele’s senior managers, teachers, librarians, learning resource managers, IT and
finance staff took part in workshops and post-workshop meetings to share their views.
Together they agreed the findings.
14 Jisc’s value to HE: Keele University