“Anything that we use at universities to do blended learning or remote teaching needs to be replaced, or it needs to be updated,” Rinaldi said. He said the length of the production process for new semiconductor chips and their limited supply in the market will reduce the availability of technology. Matteo Rinaldi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, said personal technology that students and faculty need for hybrid and in-person learning will become more expensive and less available over the next year. “To that end, GWIT placed the next order of more than 400 computers this past week.”Įxperts in supply chain management and computer engineering said the limited access to personal electronics and other technologies will slow higher education institutions’ replacement of broken or outdated devices and their response to urgent technological errors. “With the recent delivery of additional equipment, we are beginning to fulfill computer refresh requests for functioning, out-of-lifecycle computers,” Johnson said. He said 57 percent of the machines that GWIT ordered between May and August have been delivered so far, mostly within the past week, and the remaining orders are expected to arrive by the first week of November. “ prioritized the distribution of machines to new faculty and staff members and those individuals who have a non-functioning machine and no backup device to use.” “In some cases, we were able to work with the vendor to prioritize the order fulfillment of a small portion of a larger bulk order,” he said in an email. Johnson said the shortages have delayed the University’s personal computer and technology orders, and officials have tried to prioritize certain products, like computers for faculty and staff, to speed up delivery. Interim Chief Technology Officer Jared Johnson said the shortage, which officials expect to continue into next year, has “significantly” increased the time it takes for officials to fulfill technology orders for equipment like Dell Latitude 7420 laptops, which will take two and a half to four months to arrive.
Semiconductor chips, an electronic component used in many devices, have been in shorter supply since late 2020 because of decreased manufacturing as plants shut down, straining international supply chains. As the global supply of computer chips has dwindled during the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said officials, students and faculty could struggle to find reasonably priced technology this academic year.
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